Brandy

♫ You're a fine girl, what a good wife you would be...♫ ♪

Today's WOD was fun!  Happy (belated) Birthday to Brandy! 

For time:

30 Calorie row
30 Kettlebell swings (Men 55 lbs, Women 35 lbs)
30 Box jumps (Men 24” box, Women 20” box)
30 Pull-ups
30 Wall ball shots (Men 20 lb ball, Women 14 lb ball)

My time:  12:31, Rx

I more or less skipped the strength today.  It was Push Press and I did several sets with the bar and a few at 55 & 60 lbs.  Just still feeling a bit of low back strain, so I'm waiting a few more days.  Hopefully I'll be ready for back squats on Monday.

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Recipe time!

Everyone in the paleo/primal/low-carb world, it seems, has raved about the "cauliflower pizza crust" at one time or another.  So I decided to try it out.  I like experimenting in the kitchen.

Here's the lowdown:  I didn't take step by step pix of the entire process, but I do have a few pix.  The basic recipe is this (it varies from website to website and I even modified it myself, so Google it if you are interested in trying it, or just use this method if you decide to make one):

Oven @ 425° - heat your pizza stone in the oven while you do prep work (if you have one...if not just use a pizza pan - but cover it with parchment - I understand this stuff sticks to pans like nobody's business!)

1 1/2 cups of riced cauliflower (shred a head of cauliflower in food processor, microwave 8 minutes)
1 cup parmesan cheese (the powdery kind or the shredded kind - mine was a half and half mix)
1 egg and 1 egg yolk
garlic, salt, spices (I used dried basil & 1 clove fresh garlic)

Once your cauliflower is cooked, you put it in a clean towel or some cheesecloth and squeeze all the water out of it.  This takes a bit of work, but you want it fairly dry.  Squeeze and then squeeze some more.  THEN you measure it once it is fairly free of water.  Mix all that stuff together into a dough.  Then you press it out on parchment paper into the shape of a crust:


Then slide it into the oven onto your pizza stone:

Let it bake for 10 minutes, then slide it back out with a pizza peel (that wooden paddle thingy) and flip it over.  It's up to you how to do this, but I covered it with a second piece of parchment, sat a cookie sheet on top of it and flipped the whole thing over. Then slide it back in the oven and cook it another 5 minutes.  Take it out and let it cool on a rack for a little while. 

Then add your sauce and toppings.  You'll want any veggies or meat to be pre-cooked before putting them on:

After you get the toppings on, slide it back into the oven and let it bake just a few minutes until the cheese starts melting.  Then change the setting to BROIL and stand right there by the oven and watch it so the parchment doesn't catch fire.  Ha ha!  Seriously...watch it - it only needs to broil a couple minutes to brown up the cheese a bit. 

Here's the finished result:

(That one section has goat cheese.  I wanted to know how goat cheese tasted on a pizza and it was DAMN GOOD, just FYI!)


You can pick it up just like a regular slice of pizza.  The crust has a nice crunch to it like bread, and I really wouldn't have known much of a difference if I hadn't made it, but I swear I could tell it was "different" than a normal crust. Perhaps my thinking was prejudiced because I made it and I knew it was cauliflower.  I'd love to give someone a blind taste test and hear an opinion. When it cooled off a bit, I could definitely tell a difference and taste a distinct cauliflower flavor.

All in all it was a successful experiment, but the bottom line is, it's a lot of work for a passable substitute.  My way of thinking is, since we allow ourselves a couple of "cheat" meals every week, I would rather just go have a real pizza as a cheat meal than to go through the trouble of making a fake pizza crust.  Plus this is kind of a cheat meal anyway just by virtue of the cheese involved!!

Now, if I were a person who just absolutely could never ever ever ever ever eat bread or anything grain related lest I keel over dead, then this crust would be perfect.  My sister, who is a strict adherent to the Atkins plan, loves this crust.  She's one of the ones who swears it tastes "just like the real thing".  I think it's been so long since she's had real bread, she actually believes that.  And good for her...she's losing a lot of weight with that lifestyle.

So, there you have it.  I had to try it and now I know.  Recipe gets an A for creativity and healthfulness (is that a word?), but the effort involved weighed against the end result, reduces it to about a C+ for me.

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TGIF!!