Paleo Pizza and Paleo Pie

Yesterday was such a good day. Art and I decided to make dinner together, and we made a healthy dinner that was still delicious. Yes, pizza and pie can be healthy! I will tell you how.

We use blanched (skinless) almond flour instead of wheat flour. Almonds are a great source of fat, and they won't cause an insulin spike because they contain very little carbohydrates. They're also just delicious. Click here, here, here, here, or here to purchase blanched almond flour in bulk.

Here is how we made our super healthy delicious pizza crust:

-2 cups almond flour
-2 eggs
-2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
-1 tsp salt.

If you want, you can leave out the salt completely. We found that even with that little amount, we could taste the salt. I think I'll leave it out next time. Now, the only complaint I have with almond flour is that I have had trouble coming up with a good consistency. I find that almond flour it doesn't hold together as well, but it certainly won't deter me.

So you've got your dough, just roll it out onto whatever you want to bake your pizza on. You can make the crust quite thin, because almond flour is quite dense. It might not look like much pizza, but I promise: it WILL fill you up.

Bake the crust at 350 for 15 minutes, then add your tomato sauce (we made our own with canned tomato paste, water, oregano, and garlic powder), meat, vegetables, and shredded cheese. Bake that for 15 more minutes, and you're ready to enjoy healthy pizza!

Oh, two side notes:
1.When using chicken or beef on the pizza, cook the meat before you put it on the pizza. We used pre-sliced deli ham last night, so that's definitely an option.
2.Be sure to grease the pan that you will be using. We have forgotten to do this twice now, and the crust stuck to the pan, and we had the joy of scraping it off.

Now for the apple pie! Here is the recipe for the crust:

-1.5 cups of almond flour
-1/4 tsp salt
-1/4 tsp baking soda
-1/4 grapeseed oil (it's sweeter than olive oil or butter or shortening, healthier, and can withstand higher baking temps)
-2 tbsp agave nectar (we use this as our sweetener instead of sugar. It's natural, and lower on the glycemic index, so again, it won't cause an insulin spike)
-1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix dry ingredients, mix wet ingredients, then add one to the other. Because I made an apple pie last night, I also added 1 tsp of cinnamon to the crust mixture. I thought it would add an interesting element. Press the dough into a pie pan, and bake at 350 for about 20 minutes. You might want to put foil around the edge so that the edge of the crust doesn't burn.

Depending what kind of pie you are baking, you could double the recipe and set half of it aside for the top crust, like I did.

For the filling, I made it up on the spot, so these are my best guesses at measurements:

-2 apples, sliced and diced
-1 tsp cinnamon
-a pinch of nutmeg
-a pinch of cloves.
-2 tbsp agave nectar (to sweeten them a little bit, and to make sure that they wouldn't dry out when they baked. You could probably add more agave nectar if you wanted to)

Pour the mixture into the baked bottom crust. You could roll out the second crust and put it on top, or crumble it over the top like I did. Cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes. Then take the foil off and bake for about 10 more minutes. Cool and enjoy!

So there you go. No unhealthy sugar, no unhealthy carbohydrates, no unhealthy fat. Still delicious and filling. Like I said, healthy eating doesn't have to be boring. It doesn't have to feel like punishment. It should be interesting, fun, delicious, and totally possible.