Easy Summer Meals with DIGIORNO®

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Do your kids like to swim?  Mine do.  Pretty much every Saturday and Sunday during the summer, they wake up with one request – “Can we go swimming, Mom?”.  The thing about this request is that it doesn’t start at noon, or even in the afternoon…no, this request starts early in the morning.  Normally somewhere around 8:30am.  And if I let them, they’ll get in the pool by 9am and refuse to get out until the late afternoon.  They love to be in the pool so much, that sometimes I think that they grow gills during the months of June, July & August.  But who could blame them?  I remember being the same way when I was their age.

So this weekend I wasn’t surprised when my girls pretty much refused to get out of the pool at lunch time.  They’d been in the water since just before 10am (that’s considered a “late” start for them) and it was just after 1pm when I begged them to get out of the pool and eat something.  Normally, I’d just wait until they got hungry and came out of the pool on their own, but with Greenleigh’s recital that night, I knew I had to get some food into them or the evening would be a disaster.  Instead of fighting them, I decided to take a different approach…an “if you build it, they will come” approach.  So I headed into the kitchen, figuring if I made lunch and set it out for them, they would surely realize they were hungry.  After all, they had been swimming for hours by that point.

As I opened the freezer to look for a quick meal idea, my eyes immediately landed on the oven ready DIGIORNO® pizzas that I’d picked up at Walmart the week before.  My kids can’t resist pizza, so I knew it was the perfect lunch.  Surely, they’d get out of the pool for pizza.

While we had a few different varieties in the house – DIGIORNO® Design A Pizza™ , DIGIORNO® RISING CRUST® Pizza, and pizzeria! from DIGIORNO® – I settled on the pizzeria! from DIGIORNO® because it was a pepperoni pizza, and pepperoni is my kids’ favorite topping.  I was positive that it would lure my kids out of the pool.  It also happened to be the shortest cook time at just 17-19 minutes, which really helped out with Greenleigh’s recital time inching closer and closer.

So I put the pizza in the oven and went to grab some juice boxes when I realized that I had watermelon in the house.  My kids love watermelon, just about as much as they love pepperoni, so I thought this was the perfect time to make some fresh fruit slushies, or in this case – Watermelon Slushies.  Who can blame a mom for trying to sneak in a serving or two of fruit?  And they’re pretty easy too.  By the time the timer buzzed letting me know that the pizza was done, I had slushies blended, poured, and ready to drink.  It was just that simple!  Lunch was served.

I took the food outside and placed it down on the patio table.  Sure enough, within minutes the kids emerged from the pool, just long enough to enjoy some pizza and a slushy.  It worked!  DIGIORNO® and some cool Watermelon Slushies saved the day (and recital night!).

I’m definitely keeping lots of DIGIORNO® oven ready pizzas in the house this summer – I may never get my kids out of the pool if I don’t!

Want to make that slushy you see above?  It’s really simple!  Here’s the recipe –

You will need:
1/3 of an average sized seedless watermelon, cut into smaller size chunks (bigger sizes make it harder to blend)
2 cups of ice
2 Tbsp sugar (optional)

Directions:  Put all ingredients in the blender, with the ice towards the bottom.  Blend for approximately 2 minutes, or until you reach your desired consistency, opening the top of the blender and stirring if necessary.  Serve immediately.  Enjoy!