Using Frozen Foods to Balance Your Plate for Inexpensive, Quick, and Easy meals with California Pizza Kitchen #MyCPKPizza

I am a member of the Balance Your Plate team and helping spread the word about CALIFORNIA PIZZA KITCHEN® oven-ready pizzas. As a team member, I receive product and incentives in exchange for participating in brand-related activities.

For busy families like mine – we often find ourselves coming home later in the evening, and the kids are starving. They beg and beg us to stop at fast-food restaurants, but we are absolutely OVER them. It just doesn’t feel like real food. So we come home, and we don’t have the time to make a fancy meal – so we resort to something that almost sounds as bad as fast-food… Pizza. Frozen Pizza. Fortunately we have learned recently that frozen pizza can be part of a very balanced and nutritious meal. Of course this doesn’t happen every night, there are definitely nights that work that I’m able to plan ahead and prepare a meal for us. But every now and again there are just ‘those days’ that my original dinner plans become irrelevant.In fact, most Americans only meet the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for proper nutrition approximately 7 days (2%) out of the entire year!! I’m sure I’m guilty of some of that… That’s why Nestle created the ‘Freshly Made. Simply Frozen’ initiative – to show how frozen meals can help fill the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for nutritious and wholesome meals. Flash Freezing food is natures ‘pause’ button to reduce nutrient loss that often occurs prior to consumption of fresh produce. Frozen meals take away the biggest reasons for being unhealthy – which are ‘Money, Time, and Complexity’.  It sometimes seems that healthy meals have to be complex, and complex meals take a lot of ingredients and that costs a lot of money – and then it takes a lot of time to put together. 

Balance Your Plate is a campaign aiming at helping people pair high quality frozen foods with fresh fruit, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat dairy, or other fresh ingredients.

California Pizza Kitchen put this to the test. They asked us to create a balanced plate and pair their high-quality frozen pizza with a side to balance our families plate. I was first quite impressed at the selection of gluten-free pizzas, but we don’t have any sensitivites that we’re aware of in this house, so I went with the regular Margherita pizza, which is my favorite – and the kids really like cheese pizza so it’s the best of both worlds. Pairing this with a freshly made Greek Barley Salad from a friend was the perfect thought. Maybe a few extra sweet peppers, because we all love eating those raw! (Yep- even the kids!) 

I was initially very impressed at the quality of the frozen pizza. The chunks of tomatoes and chunks of cheese just made me really excited to get it cooking and get to eating it, ASAP! 

It was quite fantastic. I had one slice and some salad and milk and really enjoyed the dinner. I of course picked off all the extra tomatoes for the kids’ side because they “Don’t Like Tomatoes…” (even though they eat them all the time..) 

I know we’ll be eating more of the CPK frozen pizzas because they are hands-down so delicious and are easy to balance along with a side salad or fresh-veggies. 

For more information regarding Balance Your Plate or California Pizza Kiten frozen pizza, visit the following sites:

• Balance Your Plate (http://www.nestleusa.com/nutrition/balance)
  • An overview of all things Balance Your Plate, including products recipes and other helpful resources
• CPK Frozen (http://www.cpkfrozen.com/)
  • Excellent information on CPK frozen pizza, including pairings of salads, starters and other items to create a delicious meal