Gourmet delights in Dietland

For almost an hour tonight, I labored in the kitchen convincing myself that I had not lost the touch. I could still create a gourmet delight. It’s been over four months since I had bariatric surgery and since that time, I haven’t been very interested in eating much. My meals are small and concentrated on consuming a lot of protein. Don’t worry, I manage to get my nutritional requirements, but volume is not a big part of my “eating plan.”

So, tonight I came across a pizza recipe. It looked simple. I had the ingredients … almost. I’ve never been one to sweat the small stuff when it came to cooking, so I did a little substitution. The crust was to be made from shredded mozzarella cheese. I had a lump of fresh mozzarella which I’d bought a couple of weeks ago, opened and used once. It was on the back of the third shelf in the refrigerator. It had no mold, so I cut it up. There was no shredding. It was too soft. 

To that I was to add almond flour. Who buys almond flour in Texas? I had some walnuts pieces and figured that was “new age” enough for the experiment. I certainly wasn’t going to grind up that $8 bag of pecans. So I ground up a bunch of walnuts in my handy little grinder, and came up with walnut butter. It was a little moist, so I dusted in a little flour … voile “walnut flour.” 

The mozzarella didn’t melt quite like I thought it should. It took several tries in the microwave to get it to look liquid. However, I’m not sure the measuring cup will ever be the same. To get the majority liquid, the cheese around the sides turned to concrete, and a great amount of the excess water poured over into the microwave floor. 

I stirred in the “walnut flour,” an egg (which was exactly called for in the recipe), and something else … garlic powder or garlic salt … not sure. The resulting dough (if one can call it that) was spread on a baking sheet and cooked for ten minutes in a hot oven. It swelled up. So I re-read the instructions and found that I was supposed to “dock” the dough. I returned it to the oven until it behaved.

Then I realized that I had no pepperoni or sausage or pizza sauce or whatever else an Italian person might put on a pizza. I found two dead mushrooms and an onion in the vegetable bin. I decided against ketchup. Anyway with the toppings and a little more mozzarella cheese, it was back to the oven for another ten minutes or until “it got dark.” Hmmmm. That’s what it said.

Fresh mozzarella cheese is not cheap. Walnuts are not cheap. The utensils which were coated with mozzarella cement and thus decimated were not cheap. I was so tired of the garlic smell by the time it came out of the oven, I wasn’t sure I’d ever eat it. But it was OK. It looked like a pizza. It smelled like a pizza, and tasted kind of like a pizza. 

If I’d had shredded mozzarella, almond flour, and pepperoni; it might have been a pizza.