Pizza Roll-ups

Thanks to Girl's Camp last week I've learned a few things. 

1) The world will NOT come to a complete and utter stop if I go camping. (much to my dismay) 

2) A so called "omelet in a bag" is not, in fact, a real omelet.  *shudder* The theory here was to make our own omelets by throwing eggs, cheese, chives and some turkey (?) into a zip top bag and boil it in a pan of water over the fire.  Some came out okay others, not so much. All in all, I still think it gross.  Next year I'll teach our girls to make overnight oatmeal. Yeah, that will work better!

3) Despite my best preparations, Daddy will NOT use all the meals I so tirelessly prepared for him and our younger children. :( BUT I can't complain, he didn't feed them junk food all week either so I'm still happy.

4) Pizza good!  Well, okay so I realize that this is totally not following any of what I said my recipes would be free of, but since I made this for my KIDS, who don't have the same dietary restrictions I do, I'm including it.

 

Start with a pound of pizza dough.  You can make it gluten free, I chose to be super lazy and just bought some prepared pizza dough from a local pizzeria (easy!).  I rolled it out thin and tried to keep it pretty even.  I wanted it to stay all perfectly rectangular but darn it if the dough didn't have a mind of it's own! 

Ooh now it gets fun!  You get to top the dough now.  Leave off the sauce for now.  Start with the Meat mix, Don't forget to cook it first! Hopefully you just had some in your freezer from my last post.

Look at how cute those tiny pepperoni are!  What's that you say? You want a close up of those cutie little darlings? OKAY!

They're just so cute and yummy, for the kids that is. Now top with cheese.  If there are other toppings that your family loves on pizza go for it, (onion, peppers, pineapple {although I have no clue WHY}, olives, mushrooms, ham, chicken whatever you want)

 

 roll, roll, roll! Keep it tight so all the filling doesn't spill out. It'll look all lumpy and bumpy. That's okay.

See? isn't it a thing of beauty? Now the cutting begins. I use a large, non-serrated knife for this. Cut in half, then those two halves in half and finally each of those into thirds.  Any smaller and you run into pizza rolls that are too tiny and that's just sad. 

Half then half again.

Now into thirds for each section. Some of the filling falls out but you can just tuck it back in once it's on a baking sheet.

 I like to let them rest for 20 minutes, to get a little raise out of them.  Then bake for 15 minutes at 350 degrees.  We're par-baking them.  They'll not look done but that's okay.  This is a freezer meal remember?  After they've cooled you can easily put them in a zip top bag and then into the freezer. 

Now when you're ready to eat these things of beauty, you simply defrost them, put them on a baking sheet again and bake them for 15 minutes at 350 degrees.  NOW you get to use your pizza sauce and either dip them (my favorite) or put a scoop on top and cut it up. 

This is Yummiest served with a salad and green beans. 

I much prefer to make two of these at a time and get two meals into the freezer, it's honestly not that much more work and it saves a TON later on!  Try it!

Now to the recipe for Pizza Roll-ups:

1 pound pizza dough (home made or store bought)

1 pound bag of all purpose ground beef 

1 package of pepperoni 

2 cups mozzarella cheese, grated

any other pizza toppings you like.  

1 jar of pizza sauce (this will be used later)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, grease a jelly roll pan. Roll out the pizza dough like you would for cinnamon rolls. spread the cooked ground beef over the pizza dough.  Add the cheese and pepperoni over the ground beef.  Save the pizza sauce, you don't need it here.  Add any other pizza toppings (onions, olives, peppers, etc).  Roll up like a like cinnamon roll.  slice into 1 inch roll and place on greased baking sheet bake for 15 minutes, allow to cool. Place in zip top bags and freeze until ready to serve.  When ready to eat, defrost then place on baking sheet again, bake for 15 minutes at 350 again.  Serve with the sauce either next to or on top of cooked pizza roll-ups.

 

So I'm a lazy cook.

I kind of hate to say it but, I am a lazy cook.  I don't really appreciate that it can take over an hour to get dinner ready.  I want short cuts.  And I want a lot of them.  I'm perfectly willing to sacrifice a day of my life in order to accomplish quick dinners.  Enter Once A Month Cooking.  My best friend.  It makes those times when I just don't have time for dinner prep easier.  It means my kids will have nutritious dinners this next week while I'm away at girls camp.  Daddy no longer has any excuse to not feed them healthy foods.  Even he can dump things into a crock pot or put it in a baking dish and bake.  This is the guy who thinks that all he has to "cook" is pour milk on cereal.  To his credit he's not a bad chef, when the directions are very clearly outlined.  He does NOT get my way of "oh just dump some of this and a little of that and bake until it's done"
 One of the tips I got from my internet hunts was this.  All purpose ground beef mix.  At first I was thinking, are you kidding me? That is so, out there.  but in all reality, it's a HUGE time saver.