Mother-Daughter Pizza Pasta

My daughter and I have come up with a recipe for pasta that she loves to eat. I know most kids love pasta, but she has never been a noodle kind of person. You know the spaghetti pictures that everyone has of their kids? I don't. She didn't enjoy spaghetti and even getting her to eat macaroni and cheese was like pulling teeth. HOWEVER, this recipe came from talking about the kinds of foods she liked and didn't like and what we could do to make something that catered to her finicky taste buds. Hence, the pizza pasta. Here is our recipe for success....


1/2 of a 1lb box of medium sized shells (we used barilla!)
1 whole tomato, chopped
1 green pepper chopped
24 pepperonis, quartered
3/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1 can medium black olives
1/2 cup Tuscan House Italian dressing (with no artificial preservatives) from Kraft

This recipe requires mostly dumping and stirring on the part of the child. I did all the chopping beforehand and put the ingredients all in separate bowls so she could do the dumping and stirring all by herself.
So, dump all ingredients in a large bowl. Stir, chill, serve and eat!


The days have been long, trying to get my kiddos to eat certain foods...but things like this help me to see that we've come a long way and help me to look forward to our future with food! I'm also getting better at taking the long road, rather than doing all the work myself and calling them to the table in time to consume. Letting them get involved to a certain degree really seems to peak their interest in eating what has been prepared. Genius, I know.

Speaking of pizza, this is a fantastic post on 10 paths to painless pizza-making. The pictures at Smitten Kitchen, as always, are so delicious.