Health And Cauliflower Pizza Crust
  Let's talk health for a minute.  One of my favorite subjects in school since I was a little girl was my "health" books where I learned about our amazing bodies and how to properly take care of them.  The subject has fascinated me because human bodies, and what they're capable of, are truly incredible.
  Now for the question of dieting : If you were to ask me if I diet, my first answer would be no.  Before you write me off for that statement, let me inform you that I used to struggle with my weight and was a good 40 - 50 pounds heavier in college.  Like I explained in my previous post, I used to believe that you either had to have incredible genes or put yourself on very restrictive diets in order to be thin/ in shape.  Is it a coincidence that I struggled with my weight as a result?  I believe so.
  I grew up eating what I considered at that time to be pretty healthy.  We were a big family - 9 kids, so while we did eat fresh veggies, they were too expensive to eat a lot of so we had a bunch of frozen or canned veggies too.  We were a hunting family so fresh venison definitely came around.  My Mom is a farmer's daughter so "meat and potatoes" or casseroles were a staple - especially because it was easier to feed a large family that way.  We could pick one fresh fruit a day and have it with lunch.  This diet worked well for my brothers and my Dad, but not so much for my sisters and I.  It was hard to "diet" (a.k.a - have a much smaller portion than everyone else) and feel like there wasn't any food option to fill up on.   I was discouraged and resigned myself to a destiny of a life-long struggle with food and my weight.
  When I was 22 and living with the family that I nannied for, I was introduced to a somewhat different diet. I first started hearing things about "healthy" fats, raw milk and cheese, grass fed beef, sprouted grains etc. when my now sister-in-law began seeing a chiropractor.  She showed me a book called Nourishing Traditions (find that here) and I began to understand a whole new world of health and how cells use fat to clean themselves and that we can "re-program" our bodies to become fat burners etc.  Living with her and her family at the time and eating that way, I lost some weight.  When I met Peter, I lost more weight.  I believe that this was partially because I was happy and had something else to focus on besides food.  Peter introduced me to the gym and taught me how to work out.  I started to see muscle definition and lost more weight.  I was happy and felt better than I had ever felt before and yet, I wasn't dieting!  I was considerate of my portions of course, but I pretty much didn't think a ton about what I ate and definitely did not feel deprived because I wasn't.  This new way of eating became a habit which was nice because Peter was used to consuming GREAT amounts of fresh produce everyday and lots of healthy fats.  With my old way of eating, my only option was dieting;  with my new way of eating, it's a lifestyle with no dieting. And I LOVE my new lifestyle.
  After we were married, I got a job as a chiropractor's assistant and that really helped to bring my eating and exercising into focus because that's what I was teaching others everyday.  If you were to look at my diet it would appear to be a conglomeration of paleo, nourishing traditions, vegetarian, maximized living, trim healthy mama diets.  I don't have one particular diet that I follow because I don't believe in extremes.  We eat gluten free sometimes but we as a family don't make it a big point to eliminate gluten as long as it is whole grains or sprouted grains.  We also eat out occasionally and let ourselves splurge on desert or white pasta.  We do avoid sugar and try to use other alternatives so you will find that some of the recipes that I post will have other substitutes.  I do have my dark chocolate almonds every afternoon with my chai tea so, again, I am not extreme. =)  That will have to be all for today because we need to get on to the main event:


Cauliflower Pizza Crust:  All I keep hearing about from my gluten free friends on FB is about this amazing pizza crust made out of cauliflower.  I figured it would be fun to try it one day so I bought 2 heads of cauliflower and tried it.  It was more work than regular pizza but it was good! I got an orange head and a white head of cauliflower.  Together they made one big cookie sheet pizza.  It takes a lot of cauliflower to make one pizza so that was one downfall for me.  For the official recipe find it here.

I blended up the cauliflower in my Vitamix - the recipe said to use a food processor but I don't have one so I used what I had!  The first head I did all at once but I found it to be much easier to do a little at a time so that the bottom didn't just get mushy.  Once it was all blended, I put it all in a pan and added a little water to steam it (probably about 3-4 tablespoons)

I steamed it for about 4-5 minutes and then put it straight into a dishcloth (I don't have the right size of strainer so I had to skip that step).  I squeezed the excess water out of the cauliflower in the dishcloth.

Then I mixed all the ingredients together in a bowl:  cauliflower, egg, chevre, salt and oregano.  After that I lined a cookie sheet with tinfoil (didn't have parchment paper!) and sprayed it with my coconut oil spray just to be safe.  I pressed the mixture into the pan and shaped it into a crust.

Cook the crust for 35 ish minutes until it's just about cooked and then add your toppings.  We love to load our pizzas with veggies so I steamed some broccoli, onion and red pepper.  In the time it took for me to load the pizza with sauce, veggies and cheese, my little man managed to make my living room his disaster zone.

He is into EVERYTHING these days and it's amazing how quickly he can make a mess.  =)  Once the cheese was melted (about 5 ish minutes), I cut into the pizza and we sampled it.  Wow, did I say that my baby loved it?

He would not stop eating it!  After his first few bites with veggies, he just wanted the plain part that had sauce and cheese.  I was okay with that.  I think he liked this better than regular pizza because the crust was soft enough for him to chew and eat without having a mouth full of teeth.  I gotta say, after making this pizza I had come to the conclusion that it was fun but a lot of work - probably more work than I want to do on a regular basis.  BUT, when I saw Simon eating and eating....that did give me second thoughts.  When Peter tried it his diagnosis was that it was surprisingly good (he is not a huge pizza fan like I am though!).  So, it might be something I continue to make occasionally.  Let me know what you guys think and if you have tried it before!

Until the next recipe...

XOXO
Joy