Glycemic index Archives - Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Vegetable Pizza From a Home Oven

Vegetable pizza is a plant-based pizza that can be made savory and interesting.

Or like this tomato-shaped farmers market okra, peppers, beets, and alfalfa sprouts pizza.

Microgreens like sprouts 🌱 are a great add to a veggie pie.

Vegetable pizza made from a home oven in the shape of a tomato.

This one was made same-day and with “00” pizza flour that makes chewy crusts like those found in frozen pizzas. That’s what I found from baking in my home oven on regular baking temperatures.

That’s different than a commercial oven that I’m also familiar with.

You see, I’m not a beginner pizza maker or vegetable pizza maker…

I spent 4 of my pre-college years working for Domino’s Pizza making pizzas in busy stores around the DC metro suburbs.

The crusts were more like softer warming bread crusts, the kind that I am used to making at home these days. 😋

At the pizza shops, they were called the regular handmade pizza crust. Bread and handmade made for good comfort food. It made the bread soft and a little airy inside.

I was glad I could achieve a similar crust at home from techniques I tested and learned.

And similarly there’s no reason why you can’t make your own handmade pizza dough from your home or apartment oven. 💭

The recipes and steps for how to turn your pizza ideas to dream reality are easy to follow and you can also check out my Home Pizza Dough Beginner guide.

You can make your own easy pizzas from you home oven. And you can see some of my fall pizza regular and soft bread crust examples for ideas.

And you can also make slightly more advanced light and airy, charred pizza bread crusts (like those from wood-fired pizzas or “professional” pizza equipment).

Those are impressive and deliciously satisfying Neapolitan-style pizza that can come easily from your home or apartment oven! …Yasss! 🤸🏼‍♂️

I think pizza is an easy add anyway.

Especially because food costs have climbed a lot over the past years, and making your own home pizzas is a good way to save food and pizza money… and still get your satisfying pizza-fill on Game and pizza craving days.

Making pizza bread is as easy as 1-2-3 once you get the hang of it. It can be an auto-no-brainer with a few tries.

And that can be a regular healthy meal for you (more on this below)…

It’s also a way to impress your friends with your pizza kitchen skills like with this pizza that you may be surprised to know was made in my apartment oven with just a regular baking pan:

…So no fancy tools. And no wood-fired or outdoor pizza oven. What’s not to love? It did get gobbled up – leaving no crumbs.

And pizzas are also such an easy way to add more anti-inflammatory healthy plant-based foods to your diet.

A vegetable pizza is an easier sell than a plate of veggies (for any age) because not one ingredient is the star.

It’s the salty, savory ingredient melange that makes a pizza.

And it wins points for this old vegetable pizza maker! It’s happy and oh yeah, healthy…

Pizzas can be very healthy and low-fat if you don’t add as much “greasy” cheese as you see on most pizzas on the planet. In the pizza shops, our rule of thumb was one layer of oily cheese and no gaps. And that was a good amount of cheese you can pull apart.

But you can use a lot less cheese like in a Margherita pizza where healthy Buffalo mozzarella (yum!) slices are randomly added and the melted cheese patches don’t cover the entire pizza. It’s what you make it!

We also used in the pie shop, all our healthy scraps that fell in the pit for the everything pizzas. Those ingredients are just as healthy!

And you can do the same at home with very little pitfalls.

…Only pizza benefits.

Especially vegetable pizzas that make good beginner pizzas and are good opportunities to use all those veggies that the gardens are abundantly growing. 🍅 🥬

Pizzas are a great way to ramp up on onion and mushroom pairings as powerful immunity foods, especially during cold and flu season. 🧅🍄‍🟫

And if you’re dairy-free, you still can enjoy a pizza.

I remember there were always people who ordered no tomato sauce or no cheese… and even no dough…whaaat? That was before gluten-free was a thing.

And subbing those ways is all covered in my little 17-page guide. Because I believe there’s a pizza for any occasion! And can be enjoyed by anyone who can eat solids.

Oh, and I almost forgot… if you like sourdough or have never made before but interested in beginner learning skills, adding starter to your pizza dough is a great way, and for the crust’s sake that I cover as well.

It’s much easier adding sourdough starter in a pizza where it’s just a little bit and not a whole sourdough bread commitment.

Sourdough is also healthy because it’s lower glycemic index than doughs made from just commercial yeast. And that’s good for not spiking blood sugar (and helping prevent lifestyle/Diabetes 2 on the rise).

That’s just one reason why people are still so wild about the wild yeast and an added benefit for those who didn’t know!

That’s healthy food inspiration and ideal weight aspiration for anyone who has a gut and wants to keep it healthy. I’m pretty sure that’s all of us 🧡

Veggie Pizza

An easy and delicious pizza crust you can make in a couple hours to accompany veggie toppings you choose.

Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Ingredients

1 cup whole wheat flour (or combine with bread flour)
water (enough to combine and have a slightly moist dough)
1 tsp salt (kosher salt recommended)
1/4 tsp instant yeast

Instructions

Incorporate ingredients with either a mixer with a bread hook or do by hand. By hand, create a well (that looks like a volcano) in the middle of flour, yeast, and salt (like you would in homemade pasta making). Gradually add water and mix in.
After combined, knead dough. Roll with hand and flatten with palm of hand. Do not be gentle. Do this for 5+ minutes.
Let dough rest for at least 2 hours in a plastic container. Be sure the dough is moist. If baking same day, pull out and shape/flatten dough with hand leaving about 1/2" edge crust untouched.
Bake at 350°F/180°F for 20 minutes and then pull out of oven and add sauce and vegetable toppings. For wet or frozen veggies, cook those separately in a pan before adding to pizza. Bake for another 10-15 minutes or until bottom of crust is fully baked.

Bran Waffle with Lemon (Dairy-Free)

Bran waffle in your diet is good inspo for healthy and happy eating. It’s a great year-round breakfast or brunch idea.

And if you can’t do dairy, this one you’ll love!

To brighten the a brown waffle color, lemons add sunny yellow and pucker-up tartness. And actually lemons are winter fruits that we celebrate more in summer! 🍋

You would never know that these waffles have bran and lemon in them!

But bran topping or blended in bran is loaded with fiber, and a handful of all bran may be the fiber you need (without all the sugar).

Bran is a whole food and grain which means that the bran, germ, and endosperm stay intact.

In common terms, that means that extra vitamins and fiber are included and not just the starchy carb middle layer found in many ordinary grains.

Bran is also a low glycemic index food that good for anti-inflammatory.

So it’s a good start, and when you mix bran in your waffle batter, you don’t have soggy bran like in cereal. 🥣

Bran also makes for a good foundation for other flavors like citrusy lemon that comes through.

The burst of sour sweetness wakes up!

And when you add another flavor dimension like anise seed or spice, you have one tasty waffle that’s also good for your stomach gut.

You can make pancakes with these ingredients, and if you like crunch and the idea of not waiting for your stove to heat up, you can make fresh waffles.

All you need are a few extra waffle ingredients and a waffle iron.

In case you’re debating whether to get one, I did the same. I wondered if it would be another tool that would take up valuable kitchen space.

And I’m proud to say it was a great investment because waffle irons are not expensive compared to other plug-in kitchen tools. 🔌

Mine gets used regularly, and yours would too!

They also take up little space standing upright like a book 📕 that I discovered when I read the paper instructions it came with.

…I would’ve never thought of that because I’ve only seen them in motion use either sitting on a table or at a self-serve hotel breakfast bar.

And that’s the story of how the waffle idea caught on with me (…and maybe for you too?). 🧇🧇🧇

…Oh, and the best part is if you don’t feel like cooking or waiting for your stove to wake up from cold sleep, a waffle iron is a fast-heating, convenient tool.

It’s as fast heating up as a curling iron for your hair that most of us grew up with.

…Once upon a time, I had a wavy iron. I’m glad that trend died and didn’t resurrect!

…And that no waffle iron hair took its place. 😊

Let’s keep the waffles for the kitchen.

And since they’re so easy to whip up in one bowl in 5-minutes, you can free-zer up your freezer space.

Just think, this weekend or today, a happy breakfast or brunch is served in minutes! 💭 And with a bran waffle stack idea, you have a healthy breakfast that could be a daily one.

The possibility of sweet pairing flavors is endless with easy and sweet one-bowl made waffles.

Like, you can amp up your waffle fries with healthy, savory potatoes with a french fry crunch 🍟. For other one-bowl easy waffles, check out my brunch waffles and recipes.

Lemon Bran Waffle (Dairy-Free)

Course Breakfast, brunch

Cuisine American

Servings 3 waffles

Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Ingredients

1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup all-bran cereal
1/2 cup water
1 tbsp healthy oil
1 tbsp anise seeds
1 tsp cardamom (optional)
1/2 lemon

Instructions

Combine water to flour and add bran. Let the bran soften (or you can grind in advance).
Squeeze in lemon and add seeds. If you do not have anise seeds, you can substitute with poppy or chia seeds that will be also be a delight.
Cook waffles until golden brown (usually 3-5 minutes on medium setting on heated waffle iron).

Glycemic Index, Vitamins, and Minerals (Vs. Diets)

Glycemic index is an anti-inflammatory measurement good to find a variety of healthy foods.

The first time I learned of the concept of a food’s glycemic index, I was intrigued by the idea of lowering blood sugar spikes as a healthy good food consumer, and a sugar lover at the time.

…And learning that dark chocolate (like that used in my baked dessert photo above) has a lower GI score than milk chocolate, puts a smile on my face. 😊

The opposite of… feeling hangry and light-headed energy with low blood sugar, that I’ve felt before too. And make GI talk relevant for so many.

Glycemic Index (GI) measures how food carbs affect blood sugar as a nutrition score indicator. It has been around for decades, but still isn’t a common household food tool used today.

But I DO think it will be a well-known future nutrition trend for 3 big reasons:

-Diabetes rates around the world are on the rise, and most cases we know are preventable through lifestyle changes (where food can have the biggest impact).

-Glycemic Index brings awareness to the order of foods you eat based on blood glucose spikes and glycemic response. And also how foods can impact inflammation.

-The growing mention of gut health in our modern news, and as we approach newfound scientific discoveries on gut-brain health. Progress being fueled by more data and scores.

There’s no shortage of healthy research progress that keeps us on our toes.

And yet, today the Glycemic Index is not even on the daily radar for most of us that consider ourselves health-conscious.

We’ll read the Nutrition Facts label and how many carbs are on a food package. Many of us pay attention to macros and calories. But we don’t consider the Glycemic Index score mostly because it’s not on the label, but is now on your map if it wasn’t before.📍

The tricky part is, GI scoring with accuracy is complicated.

Here are a few examples why…

If you eat unripened green bananas compared to the ripe, mushy ones that are preferred in a smoothie or banana bread recipe, the GI score improves.

Ah… and a banana has no Nutrition Facts label. A banana is a banana, and best to keep it simple.

Or if you eat a salad before the higher Glycemic Index ranked food item like a potato, then you can create a nice fibrous buffer cushion that your body likes. Then, if you eat the potato skin (cushion cover), even more so.

…But like with a bed pillow, people have different responses, so the scoring is different per individual. Each body keeps different scores.

But Glycemic Index info. (that let’s be clear is not available on a food package item today) would help us, consumers, to put relevance to the order in which we eat foods and what we choose to eat.

And bring awareness to us about what’s overall churning good in our gut from our internal healthy body’s perspective.

We’d make some better healthy food choices besides what our minds tell our taste buds we want.

And well… we would be better informed.

And that’s how progress works, as we’ve come a long way…

For me and those in my U.S. generation, the 4 basic food groups literally changed overnight to the Food Pyramid of 23 servings per day by the time we were young adults.

Without the internet, I learned this in school with many others. There was always some undesignated student who casually made big news announcements around the lockers during class breaks.

That was our modern social media news medium (post styrofoam cups with a string era). 😁

And that specific news was a massive dietary recommendation disruptor. The shock was the stark contrast, from basic eating to grazing on food all day like a cow chewing grass.

Adding convenience foods could be a solution just to fit in a serving about every 1.4 hours you were awake. You could eat 23 almonds as one serving… then you would have 22 servings left to go in other food categories. But then the other snag was, back then, nuts and all fats were put in the “eat sparingly” category. That was a ‘lil nuts. 🤪

So with all that stacked up against meeting new dietary goals, the health-conscious supplemented with vitamins. Organic foods weren’t popular yet, so food quality wasn’t as important as type of calories that are still important.

And diets existed back then, and they meant eating less and less fat to lose weight, that’s more or less like today.

And there were new (but different) diet fads coming out similar as today. Here today, gone tomorrow.

The Atkin’s Diet comes to mind as every year there’s a ridiculous hot dog eating contest, that’s anything but healthy.

Many diets in general for losing weight out there are health dangerous long term. They cut off calories and starve the body from essential vitamins needed to function.

And while they’ve changed, they haven’t solved the problem.

And makes you wonder…

Why haven’t diet plans gotten smarter?

The Diet Problem: Modern Diets Are Missed Opportunities

The word “diet” has two meanings regarding meal references in the English language. Going on most diets (eating less to lose weight) is often a missed opportunity for nutrients and healthy food calories. Elimination diets are ways to scale back that are meant for a season or a few weeks.

While eating a healthy diet is a positive way of looking at (enjoying) meals and energizing the body for life. So in one “diet” meaning, it subtracts (e.g. most food is bad); and in the other, it satisfies and sustains life.

The Solution: You can find a happy medium in eating less with a healthy diet and making healthy eating habits.

Because from our decade’s past diet lessons, we know yo-yo diets backfire as we eventually want the foods we tell ourselves we can’t have.

So, choosing one that isn’t long-term restrictive that works for your body and tastes is going to do you best.

Like no-rules vitamin-rich antioxidant foods and meals that can be dressed up with anti-inflammatory flavors and spices.

Because even healthy restrictive diets don’t always translate or work well.

Like a Paleo diet today doesn’t suit many of us like it did our ancestor’s generations. We can love a grandmother’s recipe, but their ingredients were processed differently than the same written ones today.

And earlier cavemen’s processes of cooking fresh quality meat over a fire from free-range sources is not the common feedlot mass production we have today.

Despite these lesser quality food process changes, food today is helping our generation’s lifespans because overall the nutrient-dense food options available to us help offset what our ancestors couldn’t get into their bodies.

They lacked sufficient vitamins that come from foods. And one good way to get daily needed vitamins is in complex carbs available comparatively abundantly to us these days.

So, cutting out minimally processed whole grains that come in a bag or box and that carry the most natural vitamins of grain options, is a healthy miss.

The point is, that many of the lose-weight diets today are trying to cut out most carbs.

Kinda like how nuts I mentioned above were once deemed as bad because they’re fat (and there was no healthy fat category), and now starchy carbs are marked as the bad calories.

When actually complex carbs give us energy and essential B vitamins we need for daily life and I think essentially undermentioned in today’s healthy conversations, along with the Glycemic Index ones that I started with.

Keeping foods like sprouted bread, quinoa, barley, tri-color pasta, and rice in the diet are good ideas. And some fit nicely in a pantry.

Plus, they’re good sources of fiber that’s helpful for any diet.

And provide often forgotten about minerals that work with vitamins to make you and I tick.

Vitamins and Minerals Smart Knowledge

If we only read the vitamin and minerals food label section on packages, we miss the opportunity to apply and reap food vitamin-mineral synergies that optimally keep the cylinder wheels turning in the body when they’re purposefully taken together.

If you’re curious about vitamins, minerals, and Glycemic Index and getting quick knowledge in those areas, they’re part of the anti-inflammatory food list.

And speaking of love, a sustainable, life-giving diet is a healthy approach to life (and to keep a consistent, year-round healthy weight if that’s another goal).

The best part is you get to choose from so many diverse and delicious healthy foods… AND they have anti-inflammatory protection benefits.

…So your relationship with food can’t be much better! I’m gonna pop some polyphenol-popcorn over that🍿

Plus, some common healthy foods are anti-inflammatory “super” foods that go beyond antioxidants and polyphenols.

They also have high protein, fiber, vitamins, and/or minerals that help the body function better in more than ways than just one.

To me and you (…maybe?) who is passionate about healthy eating, it’s a no-brainer choice to make anti-inflammatory meals.

And over the past couple of years, as I’ve been contributing to writing food articles for health and wellness publications, I can dig into new research and appreciate healthy food innovations on the horizon, which gives us more to look forward to in our future new world.

Look out for more super at 100 (Centenarian) secrets and evidence in our daily news.

Super Centenarians are living proof and our hope that it’s possible to live optimally in old age and not miss a beat with tasty-nutritional meals, so we can enjoy the moment.

They teach us how to spruce up their anti-inflammatory meals so they’re deliciously prepared and flavored with spices. They do more from their natural lands, with less.

Next time, I’ll share some good tips on how to save grocery money with healthy eating, especially with all the grocery food prices and availability changes (yikes!) impacting us all.