It didn’t take me long in my Nutrisystem journey to recognize that while the foods are healthy and easy to prepare, they don’t all taste fantastic. Fortunately, there are few meals that can’t be improved with some spices or hot sauce (depending on the food: French Toast is not a good candidate for Tabasco, though an omelette is always enhanced!)
This week as I head into my fourth week of Nutrisystem, I thought I’d share how I turn a good flatbread pizza into a great flatbread pizza by adding a few calories worth of cheese and some key spices. The goal: to have a dinner that’s fast to prep, easy to cook and plenty tasty enough to stop me dreaming about eating a deep dish pizza pie from one of the local restaurants.
As with many Nutrisystem foods, it starts with a box:
To quote the box, pizza with part skim mozzarella, garlic chicken breast, ranch dressing, tomatoes, bacon and spinach. Not a bad combination of ingredients, and everything’s better with bacon so that’s a win too. When you pull it out of the box you can see where it might need a wee bit of love to go from good to delicious:
Nutrisystem is utilizing a neat microwave tray in the packaging that ensures your crust is crisp, not soggy if you opt to microwave it (and my guess is 99% of Nutrisystem folk do just that). It’s not badly assembled, but when I pull off the plastic wrap, things look up when I station some additional ingredients nearby:
I’m adding about 1/8-cup of cheese, a generous sprinkle of additional garlic powder and an even more generous sprinkle of crushed red pepper. The result speaks for itself:
Quite tasty, if I say so myself, and a nice crisp crust to go with it. A solid flatbread pizza that was as good as the exotic flatbread pizza you’d find and at the cost of maybe 20-30 extra calories of parmesan cheese. Oh, and it was spicy, possibly I was a bit (cough) heavy handed with the garlic!
Tip: Notice I serve the pizza on a small plate. There’s research done that shows if you fill up a small plate with food, you’ll feel more satisfied after a meal than if you serve the same amount of food on a larger plate, diminishing its apparent size. Head games!
In terms of results, this has been a really challenging week as I will have been on the road at various events from first thing Saturday thru Thursday night, so I missed my weekly weigh-in completely. I’ll report on progress next week and we’ll see how well I’ve been able to go “off menu” and sustain my slimming trajectory!
Disclosure: I have received all of my products from Nutrisystem for review purposes and that my opinions are 100% my own. As is always the case.