From Leftovers to Lunch - Pizza Dippers!

Cold pizza isn't very exciting. Cold leftover pizza even less so. To make it fun again, I turned it into "Pizza Dippers!"

Packed in an EasyLunchbox, with a Lunchbox Love note and cloth napkin (from Red Poppy Crafts on Etsy.)

Olives, pizza sauce, leftover whole wheat naan ham pizza, edamame, raspberries

Little Z pretty much only likes olive pizza. She even balked at the few fun little ham stars I put on her pizza th night before.Z and I each ate all of our pizzas, so I only had a little over half of Baby E's left. I hadn't put any olives on Baby's pizza, since she doesn't like them (neither do I!) And I don't really like eating leftover pizza, and there are usually plenty of other leftovers that Z thinks is "bleck!" but need to get eaten. So I try and save "Z-approved" leftovers for her!

If I had just plopped the slab of pizza in her lunch, Z would have moaned over the lack of olives, and declared it "too smooshy" or something. By slicing it into fun dipping "fingers," it's not the form she's familiar with, so she doesn't have the automatic expectation that it should have olives on it. Plus the dipping sauce helps mask any texture issues with it being either too dry or too moist.

And in case she decided that there should be olives on her pizza, I packed a few in her lunch in a leak-proof EasyLunchboxes Mini Dipper. She likes to poke her fingers in the holes and eat them one by one, adding to the fun-factor of this lunch. And by "filling" a small container, she feels like she's getting more than she really is, so I can portion control fats and sweets pretty well this way.

Olive and uncured ham star pizza for Z, ham scrap pizza for Mama, and ham star and scrap pizza for Baby... and leftovers!

My pizzas were made on whole wheat naan bread, from a recipe in the Cooking With Trader Joe's Easy Lunch Boxes cookbook. Did I mention what an awesome book this is? (Especially pages 118 through 127. *wink wink*)
And these are even easier than "regular" pizza. I just use pre-made naan bread. No mixing dough and waiting for it to rise. No cleaning off my counter to roll out a big blob of dough. No dye-filled tube of pre-made dough [yes. Most of the grocery store ones have fake colors. *sigh*] Plus this way it can be whole grain, if you choose.

I used my home-made veggie-filled "tomato" sauce (tomatoes, green tomatoes, tomatillos, a random bunch of greens (collard possibly in this batch,) plus whatever other appropriate veggies I had at the time. Probably a parsnip or turnip or something. And celery.) I made up a whole pot and froze it in 8 to 12-ounce servings. Enough for some pizzas or spaghetti!

She hates anything I make, dinner-wise, so moans and bellyaches through spaghetti night if it's Mama's sauce. I figured (correctly) that she wouldn't notice it as much under cheese. So for the dipping sauce, I mixed some of my leftover sauce with some leftover marinara dipping sauce from Papa Murphy's! Ha! She was totally snookered! WIN!

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