Baby Bella Pizza Bites

There are two types of people in the world: those whose mothers bought Bagel Bites and those whose mothers were never meant to bear children.

Let’s be real. When you were growing up you were either suffering from moderate to severe burns on the roof of your mouth or you were one of those kids on the outside looking in. Desperate to get invited to the mouth-burner’s house. You probably even called that kid’s mother “mom” when you were over there everyday after school. Sure, his mom told you to but she didn’t really mean it – she was just worried you weren’t getting enough love at home from your own dead-on-the-inside mother. And you weren’t. You weren’t getting enough love and you weren’t getting enough Bagel Bites and you’re 26 so stop calling your friend’s mom “mom” because she’s starting to wish she never had any children in the first place.

Anyways, mine was a Bagel Bites household. I mean, it’s hardly a surprise when you consider that one of my older brothers lived solely off Stouffer’s French Bread Pizzas for the first 25 years of his life. And that’s just because he entirely stopped cooking for himself around then. And that’s just because he considered making a French Bread Pizza “cooking.”

What I’m getting at is I ate a lot of fucking Bagel Bites as a youth. When I wasn’t humming about not being clean until you’re Zestfully clean, I was declaring proudly that when pizza’s on a bagel you can eat pizza any time. Although you could clearly eat pizza any time regardless. Just ask my brother. Who ate pizza any time every time. Man, that jingle really made no sense.

Here’s the thing though. If you eat pizza on a bagel and subsequently you eat pizza any time because it is on said bagel, you are going to have a heart condition any time. Fuck the extremely tender roof of your mouth that can hardly taste tastes any more. You are going to get fat. You just will.

The Bagel Bites website has a hilarious “Compare Snacks!” page where you can compare the calories and fat grams of a burger or chicken nuggets or a grilled cheese to four – yes, four – Bagel Bites. Can you believe that four Bagel Bites have less calories and fat than an entire fucking burger? Yes. Yes I can. Who has ever eaten only four Bagel Bites? Weren’t we told to eat them any time? That’s why they put them on a bagel, is it not? WHICH IS IT, BAGEL BITES?

Maybe it’s time we, as a people, finally take the side of the Bagel Bite-less households. Those former Households of No Return (friends don’t go to Bagel Bite-less houses more than once) were really the Households of Average Cholesterol Levels and Appropriate Sodium Intake.

Maybe it’s time we create a better Bagel Bite. One without bagels. One with a vegetable as the hero, vegan cheese as the quirky but lovable sidekick, and some pizza sauce as motherfucking pizza sauce.

Let me introduce to you the easiest thing to make since frozen novelty pizza bites: The Baby Bella Pizza Bite. Eat four and you’ll be set back a whopping 73 calories and 4g of fat. (Hey! That’s less than a burger!) So please, eat them any time.

Next week we’ll reinvent the wheel. I have big ideas for that piece of shit.

BABY BELLA PIZZA BITES
makes as many as the baby bella day is long

Ingredients:

• baby bella mushrooms, washed
• pasta/pizza sauce
• Daiya pepperjack style shreds (or real cheese, of course)
• 1 teaspoon of olive oil per 15 or so mushrooms
• nutritional yeast (optional but it elevates the pepperjack shreds)
• dried basil, oregano, garlic powder, crushed red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper

this is not a science but if you mess up, I’m going to have to fail you…

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Carefully remove and discard the stems from your mushrooms, leaving just the caps. Get them in a bowl along with the olive oil, and at least ¼ teaspoon of dried basil, ¼ teaspoon of oregano, some shakes of garlic powder, and a dash of salt and pepper. Toss to coat your mushrooms.

Arrange the mushroom caps on the lined baking sheet, mushroom top down. Spoon a teaspoon or so of pasta or pizza sauce into the cap. Sprinkle some nutritional yeast over the sauce. Top with the pepperjack shreds. Shake a few more dashes of the spices over all the prepared mushroom caps before sticking them in the oven.

Bake for 20 minutes. Serve as is, sprinkled with some crushed red pepper flakes, or stab them with some toothpicks because bitch you fancy.

NUTRITION
(based on a serving size of 4 pizza bites to compare to a serving of Bagel Bites)

Tags: appetizer, baby bella, bagel bites, baking, bite size, brooklyn, cooking, dairy-free, daiya, diet, dinner, easy, finger food, food, gluten-free, gooey, health food, healthy, hor d'oeuvres, low calorie, low carb, lunch, melty, mushrooms, new york, nutrition, nutritional yeast, party food, pizza, pizza bites, pizza sauce, portobello, savory, skinny, snack, vegan, vegan cheese, vegetables, vegetarian