Primal Cheatza Pizza (A Recipe in Pictures)

Pizza cravings -Who among us is immune to the siren song of cheese, sauce, and crust? (Well, probably lots of us, but just follow me here.) It's an American staple that is unbelievably hard to avoid, and if you've given up eating grains, and therefore crust, it may be something you're missing very very much.

I think I may have mentioned before that I enjoy cheese. And while I am a huge fan, I'm not sure if I enjoy it quite enough to make my fake pizza, or cheatza as I like to call it, on a regular basis. The crust is made, following this recipe, from about 50% cheese. Don't get me wrong, it's yummy, if you're trying to avoid carbs, gluten, or grains, it's a great way to banish the pizza cravings. It's just a lot of cheese.

Also part of the whole primal eating blueprint is not eating dairy, or just eating raw, grass fed cheese or yogurt once in a while. I admit I have definitely added cheese back into the mix, and I'm trying to stick to those harder to find good kinds. For my cheatza though, the highest quality mozzarella I could find was Kraft made with no hormones or antibiotics. While that's better Velveeta I suppose, it definitely helps put the CHEAT in this cheatza.

First I assembled the crust ingredients: Shredded Cauliflower, Eggs, Mozzarella, and Oregano.

 

Then I (incorrectly) mixed my ingredients. (I guess you were supposed to steam the shredded cauliflower before you mixed it all into a crust dough-like-thing. It still turned out well, but I think this may have contributed to the burnt edges you will see in the pictures.) I then patted the mix down into a pizza shape on a pizza pan.

This is what the crust looked like after about 14 minutes in the oven. So pretty!

Without letting the crust cool, which I figure would help melt the cheese, I piled on my MORE cheese and toppings. I used my old family classic: black olives, green peppers, and onions(these are red).

After about 6 minutes in a hot boiler the cheatza looks just like pizza, although maybe a little more rough around the edges.

Like I said before, there is a lot of cheese on this baby. I really did enjoy it though, I just felt ultra heavy and overly cheeseified after a few pieces. All in all though, well worth the effort. The left overs made for perfect lunches paired with a big salad. 

Mmmmm... Cheatza

Semi-Primal Burgers with Semi-Primal Buns

A.K.A. the best freaking thing I have eaten it a long time! I devoured my burger like a wild primaly animal. Sadly I only had enough turkey to make two of these so we only got one each. I totally could have scarfed at least one more.

The buns I used followed this recipe that I originally found from a link on Mark's Daily Apple. In this application they were a revelation! I couldn't believe how perfect everything tasted together. Eaten alone though, or with just turkey bacon as I tried to do for breakfast yesterday, the buns get a big "Eh". They tasted too dry and eggy for me. For the burgers though, perfect. I actually cut the edges off the buns, where I thought they looked too dry.

Sometimes you just gotta have cheese, right? I mean unless you're vegan or 100% primal, or my friend Shana who had to give it up during her pregnancy. (You are all stronger than I.) I know cheese is not totally Primal, but it's not entirely cheating either. I was really craving a gooey cheese burger, with a little turkey bacon for good measure, and that's exactly what I got.

(Primal?) Bacon Cheese Stuffed Turkey Burgers

1 Pound Ground Turkey (7% fat)

4 Slices Turkey Bacon

1/2 Cup Grated Cheese

1 Onion

1-2 Teaspoons of your favorite Grill Seasoning or Seasoning Blend

A good squirt of Mustard and (Primal) Ketchup and (Primal) Worcestershire Sauce

Sea Salt and Pepper

A little Olive Oil for Cooking

Saute onion over low/medium heat. Cook until they start to smell sweet. You don't want to brown them, just cook them slowly to the point of carmelization. (About 10 minutes) About half way through the cooking add the grill seasoning to the onions, this will give the spices a chance to mellow.

Cook your bacon in the pan while the onions cool to the side.

Mix together turkey meat, condiments, salt & pepper, and onion mixture once cool. Don't over mix, it will mess up your burger texture. Good texture is a burger's friend.

Place crumbled bacon and grated cheese on a plate next to you, where you won't contaminate more than you need with your raw turkey hands.

Form turkey mixture into four equalish parts. Grab one part, form it into a ball, then flatten it with your hand. Take a good amount of cheese and crumbled bacon and stick it right in the middle of that flatten piece of turkey. Fold it over and pat into a burger-like shape. The less holes the better, unless you like a pool of runny cheese cooking under your burger, which you might!

Heat a little olive oil in your pan over medium-high heat, you want a fairly hot pan - burgers should sizzle when they hit it. Cook the burgers, lowering the heat to medium after about 5 minutes. Flip when browned on the bottom. Cook second side on Medium for about 5-10 minutes til cooked through. (burger will be sort of firm to the touch and juices will run clear) Let them rest for a few minutes before serving.

Assemble your burgers.

Go, "YUM!"

All in all this was one of the most satisfying things I have had in a long time. I probably won't make them this decedent all the time, but there are a million variations to try, and now that I have a bun to use as a building block, I feel like the possibilities are endless.

Recipe: Primal Apple Crisp

I have had a severe lack of dessert since the start of my primal living experiment, which ended up lasting much longer than a week. I hopefully have broken through the wall of grumpiness and depression which may have been cause by sugar withdrawals, but that doesn't mean I have forsaken an after dinner treat completely. I've been eating a lot of fruit when I want a treat, but sometimes that just doesn't cut it.

I have been wanting to make apple crisp for a while. I think I did find a straight forward primal recipe for one at some point, but yesterday when I went to make it, I couldn't fine one recipe that didn't have something verboten in it. I basically dissected and picked apart several recipes from around the web, and used things I  had on hand already, creating something all my own.

Nina's Primal Apple Crisp

Topping:

1 Cup Nuts (A lot of recipes call for all almonds, I used Almonds, Pecans, and some Macadamia)

3 Tablespoons Arrowroot

1/4 teaspoon Salt (I omitted this because some of my nuts were salted)

4 Tablespoons Cold Butter (sub coconut oil to Veganize!)

1 teaspoon Vanilla

1/4 Cup Agave Nectar*

Fruit:

5-6 Apples (I used Granny Smiths, McIntoshs, and Galas)

Juice and Zest of 1 Lime & 1/2 Orange (most recipes called for lemon but I used what I had)

1 Tablespoon Arrowroot

2 Tablespoons Agave

1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon Fresh Nutmeg

*I use agave nectar in any recipe that calls for cooked honey. Cooked honey is considered poisonous in Ayurveda. Which my father has adamantly reminded me of my whole life. I'd rather not temp fate.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Mix dry ingredients of topping mixture in work bowl of food processor, pulse till nuts are small chunks. Add agave, butter in small pieces, and vanilla. Pulse until incorporated, butter may still be chunky.

Peel and chop apples in a separate bowl. Add juice, zest, arrowroot, agave, cinnamon, and nutmeg, mix.

In a sprayed or buttered baking dish, add apples, then top with blobs of topping mixture.

Bake for 45 minutes, til golden brown and bubbly.

This was good. Very very good. It's not as sweet as traditional apple crisp, but I thought you really got a feeling for a true sweetness of the apples without missing out on the sweet sweet goo that you have come to expect with a good apple crisp. The nuts got all toasty (be careful not to burn them) and made for almost a cookie tasting topping. We just wanted to eat only this for dinner when it came out of the oven. I will make this again.. and again.. and again.

My Primal Week and Beyond

One week down. As of Tuesday my week experiment in primal living is complete. I've read lot, cooked and ate a lot, and lost a lot of weight without much effort. Ahh, it is that last part there that probably has me stuck on the primal living kick my friends. I mean there are not many among us not looking for that magic potion that makes the pounds fly off. I think going primal is probably closest thing to that potion that I have seen work on myself (Okay besides trying fen-phen back in the day, but permanent heart damage probably isn't a good trade off for weight loss).

I spent much of this week compiling information on what exactly the parameters of primal living were, then I stumbled upon a really good explanation and starting point at Mark Sisson's Daily Apple, one of the best sites all round for information on primal diet and fitness. 

Mike and I were doing great all week, especially Mike. He has been cooking and getting creative like nobodies business (cept mine!) and says he has more energy than he has had in years. He is really a true convert, he hasn't had an eating plan click with his physiology the way this one has ever before. I feel like it's been a little harder for me though, honestly my mind keep trying to think of excuses of why I need carbs, and my monthly chocolate cravings were leading me to the edge of insanity for a few nights there. 

Here is some pretty pictures of bunless burgers Mike made us, just to break up the Nina-rambles.

Saturday was our "cheat day" due to the fact that we were taking Mike's younger brother, and his girl friend, out to Chinese. We ate noodles, a little rice, and what I'm sure is a large about of sugar in the sauces. We both felt heavy and tired that night, and I've convinced myself that this cheat is also the reason I soon after got so deathly ill. I am usually the one person left standing while some awful cold or flu mows down my compatriots, this time though I was a casualty; it was bad. 

I was down for two whole days, only seeing the sun when Mike was nice enough to prop me on the couch and open the curtains so I could watch the sunset and the rainbows from my prism dance across the walls. The rest of my time since Monday night has been spent in bed, sleeping, coughing, or whining. Today though, I am back at work, still far from 100% but sometimes you just can't stay in bed any longer.

Since my week ended on such a sickly note, it's hard for me to take stock of how I am truly feeling. I do know that I seemed to have lost my low blood sugar crankiness from not eating. I just get sort of a general feeling of hunger in my stomach without the swimmy headed nauseous feeling that used to come with skipping meals or waiting too long to eat. This is good, now if the carb and chocolate cravings would go away, and the lingering sense that I am being deprived of the foodie world I love so dearly, I would be golden. Fucking golden. 

Bottom line? We're sticking with it.

Paleo Update: Creativity in the Kitchen

Few things inspire me more than food. You can probably tell this by looking at me. I have never been able to, or willing to, sacrifice my fun in the kitchen for anything that I found limiting to my art. Trying the primal diet, I've learned that, as is the case with most of my other creative endeavors, having parameters to work within can actually makes things more fun. It gives you a sort of challenge that just have complete free reign doesn't offer.

For instance, cauliflower - I have always known that cauliflower is somewhat special. First of all it's white, and it's probably the only white food that is good for you. Of course now that I said that, someone will just come up with more foods chalked full of whitey goodness, but let's just say the usual suspects of sugar, flour, and shortening, we can live without. Mark Twain described cauliflower as, "cabbage with a college education," and with a little smarts of your own it can be your best friend, it's one of the most versatile veggies I know.

I've had three separate encounters with the fluffy cabbage cousin this week alone. It all started with my failed attempt at roast cauliflower that ended up blackened, and thankfully got much better from there. On Wednesday night, Mike made a really delicious cauliflower puree in the style of a mashed potato. He added little bits of turkey bacon to it, and the results were fantastic. I knew I had to try one more thing that I had been reading about on primal blogs though, cauliflower rice. It's so simple it's really a non-recipe. All you do it grate the cauliflower and steam it, or saute it if you like, and it is almost unrecognizable as an impostor! I ate it with some marinated mahi-mahi and even though my brain knew that what I was eating wasn't a grain, my taste buds told a different story, a story of fluffy almost al dente white rice. Cauliflower is a win my friends, and I get the feeling I am going to be eating a lot of it in the near future.

Our other creative endeavor last night was an apple and pear puree, apple sauce style, that Mike put on the pork roast he made for himself. It was so good that I had some as a dessert. All we did was boil peeled apples and pears in water with a little orange juice for some sweetness, until they were tender, then hit them with the handy-dandy stick blender. A regular blender would have worked just as well. We loved it. We'll be making a lot more very soon!

Primal Recipe: Almond Crusted Zucchini

This is Mike's recipe transcribed by me, I hope I got everything right. By request, here is the recipe for Almond Crusted Zucchini from Wednesday.

Man Recipe: Almond Crusted Zucchini

2 Eggs

1 Shallow Bowl of Ground Almonds

1 Large Zucchini

2 to 3 Tablespoons Olive Oil

Fresh Ground Black Pepper

A Pinch of Sea Salt (at your discretion)

Crack the eggs in a bowl and mix with pepper, combine with fork. Add sliced zucchini to egg mixture and coat all pieces. Let the zucchini soak in the eggs for a few minutes.

Heat olive oil on medium heat.

Remove one slice at a time from egg mixture and drop into bowl of ground almonds. Press the almonds into the zucchini, making sure they are coated on both sides. 

Place the coated zucchini in your pan and watch carefully, since it cooks very quickly.

Drain excess oil on paper towels. Season with a pinch of sea salt.

Enjoy!

Paleo Update: Winner Dinner, and a Larabar

This morning for breakfast I didn't have time to do anything impressive, in fact I didn't have time to do anything at all. I grabbed a bar that I read about on Son of Grok, called a Larabar. They are made with only primal ingredients, though they do contain a lot of dates, which I guess are a little high in natural sugar. Because of this, I probably will not be eating the banana I also brought, since there is some debate on whether you can even tropical fruit at all on a Primal diet due to it's relatively high natural sugar content. Luckily I have a back-up green pear.

(Like Son of Grok, I will probably be trying to make my own primal type bars for quick grabbing, stay tuned.)

I'm not sweating my non-gourmet breakfast this morning. I think that has a lot to do with the amazing dinner I had last night that seemed to eradicate all carb cravings. My fiance, Mike, has been transformed into Primal Top Chef. When I came home from work he had already made a chicken meat loaf, made loafy with the addition of eggs, onions, and peppers. As a side, he created an amazing cauliflower puree, erasing all memory of my horribly failed cauliflower experiment from the night before. We also had a beautiful bright salad.

Paleo Update: Feeling Full

Finally I am feeling full! I think it must take the expertise of home cooking to actually make me feel satisfied. I was thinking that I would just be putting together a simple salad for lunch today, then I came home to this:

Mike knew I had been craving carbs and went to work trying to find something that would scratch my itch. He came up with almond crusted zucchini! It really made me feel like I was snacking on something naughty, which is always a good thing. The shrimp though were the best part, they were chalked full of garlicky goodness! 

When I was driving home for lunch, I couldn't even look at the all the crappy restaurants on the way. I just kept picturing pizza, or bread, or french fries. Now though, I am feeling like I don't even need the steely resolve I was planning to muster. This is how I like things to be, easy.

Paleo Update: Sad Dinner and Happy Breakfast

The carb cravings started a little before 6pm last night. I went to Trader Joes, which was great place to pick up beef and turkey jerky, natural bacons, and veggies. Unfortunately they also have a great selection of starchy and sugary foods. Mmmmm... starchy and sugary. 

I ate some turkey jerky when I got in the car. It was good it helped, but by the time I got home and started cooking dinner I was starving again. I snacked on some pineapple, almonds, and strawberries while I was cooking dinner.

Dinner was a serious learning experience for me. I tried to make a chicken and potato dish that I love by substituting cauliflower for potatoes. Of course for some reason I didn't take into account that the cauliflower would not appreciate being cooked on the bottom rack of the oven the way potatoes do. Let me tell you, blackened cauliflower tastes even worse than it sounds. The chicken turned out pretty well though and I thought I would try to make some kale chips as a side to make up for my sad sad cauliflower char. The only kale I could find in my grocery store surprisingly was pre-washed chopped and bagged. Not really what I wanted and the kale chips suffered. The kale was cut in you very nonuniform pieces so some got overly browned while other were not even cooked through. Oh well, live and learn, it will all be better next time.

I woke up this morning craving carbs again. All I wanted was something starchy. Even typing the words now is slightly painful for me. By the time I got to work, I was starting to get a little discouraged. Then I opened the foil wrapped plate that my man had made for me:

What would I do without him? The sight was a saving grace. See? It's pretty and wonderful food! You love pretty and wonderful food! And I did. In case you are wondering, it's scrambled eggs topped with sauteed onions, resting on natural turkey bacon and seared red pepper. It was delicious and satisfied me for the most part. I still feel a slight nagging in my stomach, begging me to eat anything loaded with carbohydrates. I say nuts to that! It's only been one full day. I better start practicing my steely resolve.

Paleolithic Update: Tuesday Lunch

If you have read my earlier post, you know that this is my week of eating like a cave woman. Although I can tell you the cave peeps probably never had it this good. For lunch today, I had this beauty waiting for me when I walked in the door. Thanks to Mikie, the man with the eggtastic plan. It consists of almost hard boiled eggs, some lettuce, grape tomatoes, black olives, and dill. I also had a bed of greens on the side (not pictured) with a little olive oil and fresh squeezed lemon on top. 

I can say that after eating I felt satisfied but not overly full. Now it is about a half hour later and I am feeling still satisfied; no craving at the moment. I will keep you up to date on the whole primal Nina week long experiment as things transpire.

A Week Long Experiment: Paleolithic Diet

This week I am trying something that is a little off the radar of usual Nina behavior. I love food, and I am really not big on restrictions of any kind. Sure I don't eat pork or red meat but that's not really work for me, I haven't eaten them in pretty much my entire life and never really had desire to start. This week though I am going against the grain, if you will, and cutting it out completely. (Grain that is.)

I have been reading a lot about Evolutionary Fitness and the Paleo Diet lately, and a friend of mine, who has a great new blog, is also really into it. After some more research, we decided to give it a try at our house! The idea behind Evolutionary Fitness is really mimicking the activities and eating habits of our hunter gatherer ancestors. Agriculture, let a lone chemicals and industrialized food, changed the foods we intake and our body composition has yet to catch up. On our shopping trip last night we gathered meats, which for us meant just chicken and turkey right now, eggs, nuts, tons of veggies, and some fruits and berries. The idea behind a lot of these foods is that they could be safely eaten in their raw state. This eliminates pretty much all starches and grains from the table. I have been curious to see how my body would fair without carbs and dairy, for awhile now, and here my chance to find out.

If anyone keeps up with my other blog, Look What She's Eating, you already know I keep a sort of half day food journal. For this experiment I thought I should document all my meals and snacks on here, and will continue to post what I eat at work on Look What She's Eating. 

For breakfast this morning I made two eggs, with red pepper and shallots, the rest of the raw pepper on the side, and of course, water.

Then, since I don't go to lunch until about 1:30ish, I had a handful of blanched almonds around 12:00. 

I sounds silly, and it could be just mental, but I think I might actually already be feeling better than I did yesterday. I am just feeling clear headed and I have no heart burn, which I often get after eating a meal at my desk at work. Stay turned for more meals, and more results, and check out the above links for more information!