P3: Cauliflower Crust (not ours, but sooo worth sharing!)

As found on the MyHCG Facebook page, posted by Danyel:

I don't know who originally posted this BUT, thank you, thank you, thank you!!! so yummy!!! I tripled the recipe to feed whole family!!!
Phase 3 - Maintenance...
1 cup cooked cauliflower, shredded w a cheese grater
1 egg
1 cup mozzarella cheese
1/2 tsp fennel
1 tsp oregano
2 tsp parsley
**pizza or alfredo sauce
toppings (make sure meats are cooked)
mozzarella cheese
preheat oven to 450 degrees Farenheit.
Spray a cookie sheet with non-stick spray.
In a medium bowl, combine cauliflower, egg and mozzarella. Press evenly on the pan. Sprinkle evenly with fennel, oregano and parsley.
Bake at 450 degrees for 12-15 minutes (15-20 minutes if you double the recipe).
Remove the pan from the oven. To the crust, add sauce, then toppings and cheese.
Place under a broiler (grill for the Europeans) at high heat just until cheese is melted **.
Additional Tips
Notes:
*I use frozen cauliflower prepared according to package directions. After cooked and slightly cooled, I shred cauliflower with a cheese grater, and then measure for the recipe. (Don't pack down the cup with cauliflower. Just fill it with a spoon or the cup itself.)
** The pizza sauce I use is Great Value Pizza sauce from Wal-Mart. At only 3 net carbs per quarter cup, you get a lot of punch for little carbohydrate pow.
*** You can try re-baking the pizza at 450 once you add toppings if desired, but the crust is not quite as crusty. There is a minimal difference, so see what works best for you.

Unprepared for lunch

Today, I was so busy answering questions on Facebook about what I'm doing on this diet, that I found myself unprepared for lunch. So, we had the easy-peasy luncheon of cauliflower with ranch cottage cheese dipping sauce. It's 150 calories, 170 with the grissini stick and wonderfully satisfying. :)

I have news! This morning when I weighed myself, I was down another four pounds - that's a whopping 22 pounds in 8 days.

My poor Mom has been sitting at the same weight now for the last four days. I think I'd be discouraged, but she's a real trouper and has been through diets before. Personally, I've not dieted for the majority of my life. I've worked to get healthy, and, other than this last little hurdle (weight), I am healthy. I figured that it didn't make any sense to do any of those diets - they didn't work for other people, why on earth would they work for me? The definition of sanity, according to Ben Franklin, is to do the same thing over and over expecting different results. I take it a little further and say that insanity includes doing the same things that other people have tried over and over, expecting different results for no reason.

Supper Menu

Tonight, we have crab on the menu. I wasn't sure how to make a "patty" out of it, though, so it's more like tossed crab salad. It tasted good before I tossed it into the toaster oven, though! After we ate it, we decided the original recipe needed some serious tweaking. I put the ingredients that we originally used there, but in white, so if you want to read it, you just highlight it. We thought the lemon sort of spoiled the crab and we thought the whole thing was a waste of the breadstick we used in the original recipe. :) However, after playing with the cauliflower, we determined that it would have made a much better "food glue" and thought that it would be easier to crisp up, too, so it would sort of be like a crab cake and have some shape instead of just a pile of flavored crab beside a heap of cauliflower.

Here's the recipe:

Tossed Crab Salad (55+veggie75 calories)

100g crab (55 calories)

1 grissini breadstick (20 calories)

1/2 t lemon juice

Cauliflower (mashed up to the consistency you desire)

1/4 t garlic powder

1/4 t onion powder

salt and pepper to taste

Put the breadstick into a baggie, cover the baggie and beat it until it's just crumbs. Add crab, cauliflower,breadstick crumbs, lemon juice, garlic & onion to a small bowl and mix completely. Add a very little salt and pepper, taste, then add more of any of the seasonings you feel it needs. Pull out an 8 inch square of foil, form the crab mixture into a patty shape and pour the crab into the middle and fold the foil into a pocket place on foil. Toss in the toaster oven at 350* for about 5 minutes, serve and enjoy.

We ate this with cauliflower tonight - a white meal. :)