Pizza!

I may have cracked the slow carb pizza conundrum. There are a good number of cauliflower pizza dough recipes out there, but most seem to incorporate cheese. This has no cheese. I treated my wife to this for lunch when she got back from a business trip - because we weren't sure how well it would keep, we ate the entire pizza. The ingredients and directions are what I will do next time; this was first time, so I believe I've figured out some needed improvements. The recipe will probably work without one, but it will probably be better if you have a pizza stone.

Ingredients:

For the dough

Bag (16 oz) frozen cauliflower, defrosted
One can of Great Northern beans
Two eggs
Half cup of coconut flour
Two tablespoons chia seeds
Two tablespoons Italian seasoning
One teaspoon black pepper
One teaspoon salt
One tablespoon of melted coconut oil

For the toppings

Turkey pepperoni
One-half thinly-sliced onion
Two garlic cloves, minced
Half-jar of marinara sauce (we use Trader Joe's because there is no added sugar)
Handful of spinach leaves
Handful of sliced olives (this is a real guestimate, obviously; the spinach and olives I got from the grocery store salad bar because I knew I didn't want to add too much)
One portobello mushroom, diced

Directions:

Pre-heat the oven to 425 degrees. Run the cauliflower and beans in the food processor to get it with a paste-like (or rather, dough-like may be appropriate here) consistency. Put this in a big bowl. Add the dough ingredients and mix everything up; it should be all dough-like. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper, and spread the dough as evenly as possible in the cookie sheet. Put in the oven for 15 minutes.

While this is going on, caramelize the onions and garlic in a pan.

Leave the oven on, but take the dough out of the oven after 15 minutes. Spread the marinara sauce on the dough. Add the spinach (with my hands, I shredded these a bit so the leaves weren't that big) and olives. Uniformly spread the pepperoni, onions, garlic, and mushroom (the wife recommending adding sausage next time).

Put back in the oven for 15 minutes (may need to be a bit longer to get the dough crisp), using the parchment to lift the pizza directly on a pizza stone (if you have one; if not, just put the cookie sheet back in the oven). When done, let cool, then cut and serve.

Notes from my first experience making this:

Initially I was not planning on putting it on the pizza stone; however, it did not crisp up that much, and the underside of the parchment paper was pretty moist when we first pulled it out of the oven. The wife recommended placing it on the pizza stone for another 10 minutes. On my first try, I only used 1/4 cup of coconut flour; my hope is that the addition of another 1/4 cup will dry this up and crisp it some more. This first go around I only used one tablespoon of Italian seasoning; I think the dough needs two.    

Haystacks (a Slow Carb Dessert)

We found this recipe on about because we were looking for some type of sweet dessert on non-cheat days. Shredded coconut (get unsweetened if you make this recipe) is technically not allowed on the slow carb diet, but having two or three a day does not seem to have negatively impacted my diet. And yes, they look like turds (the picture on the about.com website is some other type of cookie, not the haystacks).

Ingredients:

1/2 cup coconut oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2/3 cup powdered (not granulated) erythritol
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
artificial sweetener to taste (about 1/2 cup sugar equivalent - zero carb preferred, such as liquid forms of sucralose)
1 cup unsweetened, shredded coconut
1 to 2 tablespoons of cinnamon (depending on how much you like cinnamon)

Directions:

Melt the coconut oil. In a large bowl, put in all the ingredients. Add the coconut oil, and mix everything together. Use a melon scoop or tablespoon to form the haystacks. The wife sets them in on top of parchment paper in a seal-able plastic container. Put them in the fridge for an hour or two before serving.

That's it! Really easy and really tasty.

Unstuffed Cabbage Rolls

Our friend Vickie Ennis shared this recipe with us from budget101. As usual, we modified it a bit.

Ingredients:

1.5 pounds of ground turkey
1 tablespoon of coconut oil
2 cans of beans (we used cannelloni)
1 large onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 cabbage, chopped (we were lazy and used four bags of shredded cabbage)
2 cans of diced tomatoes
1 can of tomato sauce
1 teaspoon of ground black pepper
1 teaspoon of salt

Directions:

Brown the turkey.
In a crockpot, add the diced tomato and beans, followed by the turkey. Then add all the other ingredients, with the exception of the cabbage. Let it cook for a few hours, stirring every once in a while. About an hour before serving, add the cabbage (we did this because the cabbage was shredded and we didn't want it to cook down too much) and stir this in. When done, serve in a big bowl.

This was a bit bland (leftovers were better). I added hot sauce to mine. The wife added Greek seasoning to hers, and she said that made it much better. Budget101 calls for adding rice; I would recommend the cauliflower rice to stay on a slow carb diet.

Nuclear Cauliflower Curry Slurry

This is my most amazing recipe. I first saw it on Dr. Oz when Dr. Andrew Weil was a guest. Make no mistake - I made it better. When I say amazing, there is no hyperbole.

2 to 3 cups of cashews (Weil has raw; roasted  & salted cashews are okay)
1 to 2 cups of cup water
2 to 3 tablespoons of coconut oil
1 large onion, diced (I usually get a sweet onion, such as Vidalia)
2 large heads of cauliflower (if available, get purple or orange cauliflower)
2 14-oz cans of light coconut milk
6 tablespoons curry powder
1 tablespoon ground turmeric
1 tablespoon of ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon of salt
2 tablespoons of cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons of cardamom
Artificial sweetener (Weil mentions brown cane sugar, I start with ten drops of this one from Amazon)

At a minimum, you will need a stock pot, a blender, and a stem blender. We also use a food processor.

The biggest pain will be prepping the cauliflower.  Cut it up into chunks. We run it through the food processor first to get the pieces a bit more manageable. If you get the orange cauliflower, you get the benefit of beta-carotene. Purple cauliflower, flavinoids.

After your cauliflower is prepped, prep the cashews. Dump them into the blender and grind them a bit. When powdery, add a cup of water. Blend it some more until it looks like milk. Weil says to strain the cashews through a cheesecloth or mesh; I find this unnecessary.

Dice that onion.

Get all your stuff together. For all the spices, I would go ahead and mix all these together in a bowl. That way you can just dump the contents of the bowl into the pot. Okay, now we're ready to cook.

Put the coconut oil in the stockpot and turn the range on to a low to medium level. Add in the onions and caramelize them. Once the onions are done, throw in the cauliflower.

Following the cauliflower, add the coconut milk and cashew milk. Then add the spices and the "sugar."

When everything is in the pot, use that stem blender to really puree the cauliflower; this blender also helps with mixing the spices into the slurry.

I let this cook for an hour or two, applying the stem blender often.

This is where personal preference comes in - you really need to taste throughout this process, adding spices to your liking. I like it with a bit of heat, so I tend to add more cayenne pepper (wife would prefer a bit less). Cardamom is amazing, so I like a goodly amount of that. Salt, cinnamon, sweetener and curry are some other items you should keep near the pot during cooking to get it to the taste you really like.

I make this whenever cauliflower goes on sale, as in $2.50 a head (we splurged the last time at $3.00 a head). This makes a large batch and it is super healthy for you. Nuclear because it looks like it is glowing; slurry, because you can see it's kind of a liquid, but kind of not.

Cauliflower Poppers

This is the recipe that got me past my plateau. Instead of taking a couple of handfuls of nuts, I started taking these cauliflower poppers.

Pretty simple to make. Put some aluminum foil over a cookie sheet and spray it with some Pam or other non-stick spray (this makes it easier to remove later). I use frozen cauliflower; depending on how much I need, I spread one to two bags (one pounders) on the foil.

Drizzle olive oil over the cauliflower. Grind pepper and salt of the cauliflower. Now sprinkle curry powder, then turmeric, and then cayenne pepper.

Set the oven on 400 degrees. I start off with 40 minutes (I usually have to add 15 more). You want to bake until they start to brown/caramelize.

Cauliflower Rice

It's nice to have a base for a meal, and for a lot of meals, that base is rice. Unfortunately, rice isn't that great for you. It's starchy, and it is certainly not an allowable food on the Slow Carb Diet. My solution: cauliflower rice.

It's pretty simple to make. I run two to four bags of frozen cauliflower through a food processor until it gets to be that 'rice' consistency. In a large pan, I put in some olive oil to cover the surface and start adding the cauliflower. Cook on a medium heat. Add salt, pepper to taste. You're pretty much done when it's warm. As you are adding more cauliflower (you shouldn't dump all the cauliflower in at once), you may want to keep adding some more olive oil.

We use this as a base for Fiesta.

The MantisFly's Fabulous Meatloaf

To work with the SCD, we once tried mushrooms instead of bread.  It was ok, but but it didn't bind very well.  A couple of weeks ago, I mashed up a can of black beans and a can of kidney beans for two loafs. That worked!   We've been using beans ever since, so here is what I believe is the perfect combination for the best results. So here's the updated recipe - it's doubled for two to two-and-a-half loafs - it still has ketchup in it which has sugar, but I think it's pretty negligible (even using ketchup as  a condiment with the meal, my weight still went down the next day):

-Two to three pounds of ground turkey (we get a four-pack from Costco)
-One can each of black beans, kidney beans, and cannellini beans
-Three minced/diced portobello mushrooms
-One-quarter cup of unflavored almond milk
-Six eggs
-Two cans of Rotel (or grocery store similar)
-Two diced onions (I generally like sweet, yellow onions or Vidalia onions)
-Three tablespoons of ketchup
-Five tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce
-3 teaspoons of salt
-Four tablespoons of Tabasco (I use the original, but you could use others (e.g., Habanero) if you want more heat - you can also use another hot sauce if you like them better (e.g., Texas Pete) or not use it at all if you don't want any heat (the first form of this recipe was from Tabasco, btw)
-Five teaspoons of garlic powder or granulated garlic

Get a big bowl and some meatloaf pans.  You can go ahead and spray the inside of the meatloaf pan with Pam or other cooking spray if you want.  Also, go ahead and pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.

Mash up the beans the big bowl.  I used a potato masher.  If you wanted, you could probably run them through a food processor.  Now, here's a hint - make sure the ground turkey is fully defrosted (I'll explain later).  Dump it into that big bowl.  Add the milk, eggs (duh, crack them first - don't put the shells in), Rotel, onion, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, salt, shrooms, Tabasco, and garlic.  With all that in the bowl, start mixing it up with your hands.

It will probably be a bit cold.  That's why you want the turkey fully defrosted.  I did it when the turkey was still a bit frozen, and it was quite painful.

Now that its all mixed up, it should all be one big mushy consistency.  Put it into the meatloaf pan, pushing it down a bit to make sure it's filling the pan.

Now, here's another hint - get out a cookie sheet and put some aluminum foil on that sheet.  Set the meatloaf pan on the cookie sheet.  This way, if the meatloaf bubbles up and over during cooking, it will spill on the foil and not in the oven with a big mess.

Put it in the oven for 90 minutes - time and temperature is dependent on how well your oven matches temps.  The recipe calls for 350 degrees, I generally move mine up to 375 to be sure.

After cooking, let it sit for about 15 minutes, then slice and serve.  I like to dip mine in ketchup and my preferred side is black-eyed peas. I was lazy and forgot to mash up the beans last time (you can see the beans in the picture above; it's better to mash them up).

The wife still  loves this recipe - she always makes me cook two loaves so can she can make meatloaf sandwiches; she could only eat the meatloaf sandwiches on Saturday, which is our cheat day.