Ah. Those people.

You know the ones. Face hurting, belly splitting, eye brow raising people. Singing on the train, interpretive dancing and the endless sarcasm people. The calm, confident people.

These are the ones for me.

Throwing caution to the wind and skirting responsibility I spent a good chunk of time being awesome with three incredible human beings.

Nothing short of refreshing to be in a fantastic city, doing fantastic things. Are there anymore synonyms for great? I will use all of them to describe my time in Portland.

 

As previously mentioned, I love this city. I love it even more when I am shown around by dudes that a) know the city well after living here for years and years b) are some of the most hilarious people I know c) can make any activity a shit show of sass.

I am a big fan of sass.

Dreams came true in Portland. I got to see Beasts of the Southern Wild (magical), got to drink a plethora of beer at brew fest, got to see what kind of bluegrass spectacular Portland had to offer (nothing spectacular about it, but unlimited fodder for joke after joke after joke) and got to lay in the grass and figure out what is so special about quiet afternoons in the park.

Like I said, these are my kinds of people.

I also ate out a lot. Thai and mexican and brunch galore. The one nice thing about returning home was getting back to the kitchen. Whipping up this lil’ treat was a perfect way to get my stomach back into balance, and sigh my way back into my routine of work, sleep, work: repeat.

Portland, I miss you already.

Cauliflower Crust Pizza with Kale Pesto

adapted from Love and Lemons

INGREDIENTS:
2 cups ground raw cauliflower flourettes (about 1 small head)
3/4 cup almond flour (I used regular flour because I didn’t have almond flour and didn’t want to go to the store)
3 eggs (or you could try flax eggs if vegan)
pinches of salt
a few grinds of pepper
1/2 teaspoon onion powder (optional)
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder (optional)
2-3 tablespoons nutritional yeast (optional)

whatever pizza toppings you like, I followed Love and Lemon’s suggestion and did the kale pesto (kale, olive oil, pine nuts, garlic, salt and pepper and lemon– chose how much of each and blend in a food processor. BAM), roasted tomatoes, sautéed broccoli and toasted pine nuts. So bomb.

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Chop cauliflower and pulse flourettes in a food processor. Be careful not to puree it or grind it until it’s mushy. You’re going for a “riced” fluffy consistency. It should not be sticking together at this point.

Whisk 3 eggs and mix all of the rest of the crust ingredients together and form into a ball. We kind of just slopped it out onto the baking sheet and pressed it around until it was flat-ish… This doesn’t look like dough, feel like dough, or taste like pizza dough. It is delicious. Shoot for “dough” that is 1/4″ thick.

We popped that bad boy in the oven for 25 minutes, removed it from the oven and then put all the toppings on. We put it BACK into the oven for another 5 minutes, and let everything get warm. After removing from the oven, we drizzled on some balsamic vinegar and I topped mine with more nutritional yeast (it is like gold to me).

Mama ate hers while drinking a delicious Amber ale, which I had to mournfully turn down as my nose is getting stuffy (you know, just an early August cold… what?!) and I drank a BIT too much this weekend. Oops.

Eat. Enjoy.