Adventures in Cooking…Weird Things

This is an adventure. One that the rest of the family doesn’t want to share in. But that’s alright. More for me that way

The adventure is wheat-free (gluten?) and dairy-free (mostly straight milk). Oh, and sugar-free without artificial sweeteners. It seems that there are so many people going the “something-free” route. At first, I thought it was just a fad; a phase; the latest ‘thing’. Well… for some people it is and for others there is a serious, very real reason.

Personally, it was for comfort. If the food I eat doesn’t make me feel well, I don’t want to keep eating it. I want to feel at least okay. I don’t know exactly why it doesn’t want to cooperate with my body. Well, I have an idea but I have no authoritative diagnosis for why.

Here’s my latest ‘adventure’: Gluten-free, dairy-free, low-carb pizza.

And, unfortunately, it will have cheese. The plan was no cheese. I know; what’s a pizza without cheese? I can eat a little cheese without it causing problems but not as much is usually on pizza. I ended up having to use some cottage cheese in place of the parmesan because that’s what I had. If I were to do it again and had to use cottage cheese, I’d mix it well with the food processor. Originally, I was going to use almond meal in its place. This pizza is not my original idea (all ideas are from other sources anyway- or something like that), but the exclusion of cheese is. See the low-carb, gluten-free pizza recipe. I could use soy cheese (gag) but I choose not to.  

And then someone told me about almond cheese. What!? You can’t make ‘cheese’ from nuts! That’s just…nuts! Is that what you’re thinking, too? They apparently buy theirs at the store but I found a recipe from Rawmazing. It’s not shredded or anything like that but it’ll work for my purposes.

The purpose being to pretend it’s cream cheese to use in that pizza I linked to. {And totally a side note: I think I forgot to buy pepperoni!! *face palm*}

Here’s photos of my almond/sunflower seed cheese, while it’s being pulverized well-blended and also after it’s been drained in the fridge, as per the instructions.

Total of 1 cup of almond and sunflower seeds mix gave me a bit over 9 ounces of cheese. I need 8 ounces for my pizza. I was tempted to eat that other ounce…This stuff is good! The original recipe calls for just almonds but I ran out and so subbed sunflower seeds. I soaked them overnight together then did the tedious skinning of the almonds. I also used coconut oil instead of olive oil because that’s what I have. I think this substitution changed the outcome; it probably would have had a more thick mayo texture. Mine is a tad thinner. Next time (oh yeah, I’ll be making this again) I will use a tad less water. Because I didn’t have the cup of parmesan cheese or enough of a replacement, I ended up using all 9 ounces of the cheese for the crust.

And from that, I made pizza crust. Here’s it spread out in a greased casserole pan, and after it was baked.

I’d love to show the after with pizza toppings but that will have to be another day and another post (I’ll just slip it in somewhere lol). That post will include if the pizza was enjoyable or not as well.