So, I bought four 5-lb bags of grated pizza cheese last week. Of course, I had to make pizza that very same night. I like pizza as much as the rest of the family!
What I did differently, this time around, was to actually measure the amount of cheese I used on each pizza.
The cheese package label said that 1 serving of grated cheese is 1/3 cup. That serving size has 7 grams of protein, roughly equivalent to the protein of 1 egg or 1 glass of milk. So, I went with that as a portion for each person, on each pizza. We eat 1 large pizza, split 5 ways. I used 1 & 2/3 cup grated cheese on each of the 4 pizzas I made (for future meals). That amount is 5 servings of cheese, so just right for one large pizza for our family. And FYI, it melts down to look like much more cheese than when it is first scattered on the pizza.
The label also says that each 5-lb bag contains about 80 of those 1/3-cup servings. At 1 & 2/3 cup cheese per pizza, I can get 16 large pizzas from each bag. And at $9.98 for each 5-lb bag, the cheese portion for each pizza will cost me 62 cents. Factoring in all the other ingredients, I can make a large cheese pizza for about $1. (My crust and marinara sauce are from scratch.)
You may wonder how we can ever manage on 1 large pizza for our family of 5. To be truthful, we like pizza, but more than what the large will serve us is too much crust for most of our family. I usually serve pizza with a couple of substantial sides, like a pasta, bean and veggie salad, or a green salad with hearty toppings, like cooked garbanzos, homemade croutons and boiled egg slices.
Going forward, I plan on measuring more of my ingredients, the ones that tend to pour out loose, like shaped pasta and grated cheese, to make sure I am using the appropriate amount for the dish I'm preparing. My last big stock-up of cheese was in the fall. and it felt like we plowed through it all rather quickly. I'm hoping to make each bag last a month, which means I won't need more pizza cheese until July.
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