She asked for pizza...

Still not feeling up to par, I was planning on just heating up some of my Paleo chicken nugget freezer stash for Cave Baby's lunch. Cave Baby, however, was adamant about wanting pizza. Let me just say that I'm not a mother who gives into their child's every whim. But I do like to do things she likes with food, and I thought cooking would be a good way to help snap me out of this sickie feeling. She asked for pizza three times, so I obliged.

Paleo pizza with some leafy greens. Cave Baby was offered a peach for dessert.

Paleo pizza seemed like such a task when I first started eating Paleo. It seemed that I was dirtying a ton of dishes, spending a preposterous amount of time prepping and cutting and cooking, etc. It just seemed like a really big task. I don't know if I have it together more than I did when I first went Paleo, if I'm more used to cooking everything from scratch, or if it just doesn't take as long as it originally seemed, but today I realized that this is a really easy thing to make. And doesn't take a lot of time. I've tried a few recipes for pizza and this is what I've come up with:

Crust:
1 cup almond flour/meal (I used pecan meal because I had it on hand and I'm running low on almond flour. It made the crust darker, but it's equally delicious)
1 egg
Sea salt to taste
Olive oil (I don't measure it, but I'm guessing it's about a tablespoon)
Italian seasoning (I'm just using McCormick which has marjoram, thyme, rosemary, savory, sage, oregano and basil)
Garlic powder (of course you could use fresh) to taste (I used probably 1-2 tsp)
Onion powder to taste (I used about 1 tsp)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet or pizza stone with parchment paper. This is a necessary step. Whisk the egg with a whisk or fork, and then add everything else. Mix/combine it thoroughly. Form it into a ball, and then press into a circle on the parchment paper. Bake for about 15 minutes.

Before preparing the sauce, which takes basically no time, start your toppings. Cave Baby doesn't like much on her pizza. She absolutely can't handle veggies on her pizza, so I stick with meat for her. When I have pizza I like to have tomatoes, baby spinach, mushrooms, peppers and black olives on it. But Cave Baby literally gags if she takes a bite containing the aforementioned ingredients. So I just do sausage and/or bacon for her. I often put some baby spinach in the Magic Bullet with the pizza sauce, but didn't think about it today until it was too late.

As soon as I put the crust in the oven, I put the turkey Italian sausage on the stove. I used Jenny-O. I cut the meat from the casings before putting it into the pan (the casings can be difficult for cave baby to eat, especially on a pizza). And that was it. I just browned it.

While crust is baking and meat toppings are cooking, make the sauce. Now, it's hard to find prepared pizza sauce that doesn't have sugar or other "special" unwanted ingredients, but I actually have found some. The problem is that it comes in a big can and I use all of a couple of tbps when making a big pizza. It's organic, so it doesn't last long in the fridge either, which means it often goes to waste. I've found that just using tomato sauce (check to make sure it doesn't have sugar in the ingredient list) works well for me. I put some tomato sauce in a bowl, add some Italian seasoning (McCormick that I mentioned earlier), garlic powder, sea salt, and pepper, and stir it up. As it sits, it softens the herbs.

Once the timer goes off indicating that the crust is ready to be topped, pull it from the oven and top it! I just spread the sauce on, and then topped with the sausage. Put it all into the oven for another 10 minutes. All told, this took about 30 minutes from start to finish. And Cave baby got her pizza. I have a lot of left overs, too, which is nice...especially since school starts this week!

Enjoy!

Finished! It looks dark, not because it's burned, but because I used pecan meal . This was the perfect personal pizza size, and cut beautifully into 8 toddler-sized slices.