Cauliflower Pizza Crust

“When a wife has a good husband, it is easily seen in her face.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Today is Tim’s birthday, the first one since we’ve been married.

And over the last few weeks, as I’ve been thinking about its coming up, reflecting on what our life together is like now, about how this birthday would be different from all his previous birthdays, sandwiched between our daily rhthyms of working from home and sleeping side by side and sharing breakfasts, lunches, dinners, I’ve been wanting so much to explain to you, somehow here on this blog, exactly what my face would show if you could see it: I have a good husband.

I told Tim early when we were dating, I had a little bit of a fear of marriage growing up, a fact I know some people can’t understand and others get all too well. The best I can explain it, I think, is that when you’ve been exposed to bad marriages, or to their problems, when you’re young enough, you don’t know how to take it. And for me, I took it and turned it into fear, the kind of fear that made me read books about marriage in junior high.

Even after I met Tim and shared deep parts of my heart with him, moving to Nashville and planning our wedding, a little bit of that gnawing fear hadn’t left. There are so many men who aren’t like him, I would think to myself, there’s no way he can always be like this. Sometimes still, that fear comes up—when something triggers that part of my mind that adds up the realities of broken people (i.e., us!) covenanting their lives together. It’s almost crazy when you think about it. How can anyone really make it work?

And then I look at Tim and I marvel at our life, and I think, that’s it, that’s mystery: how God can take two selfish people and make them one, to push through the hard and the ugly and the wonderful and the unexpected, together. That adventure, that battle, is in itself a gift, a refining tool like my friend Carrie and I were saying the other night, something that changes you whether you mean for it to or not.

But the second mystery, at least for me, is that of all the people on the planet, I get to do it with Tim, a man who is, literally, unlike anyone I’ve ever known.

I am married to the kind of man who doesn’t cancel plans at the last minute, because he believes in honoring commitments, even small ones like having coffee with a friend; a man I can go to, randomly on a weekday morning, and say, you know that story in Judges chapter 6? and he knows exactly what I’m talking about; a man who’s been cooking with me since I first knew him; a man who has taught me, and teaches me, to pray about everything, from finding a source of income to resting about an upcoming conversation to writing posts like this one; a man who can humble himself; a man who, above everything else, loves God.

I feel so blessed to share this simple life with him, to work in our dining room together, to laugh about the things the neighbors do, to make a cauliflower pizza crust and eat it across from each other, next to the window, while the longer April daylight streams inside.

I have a good husband.

So to Tim, that husband: I want you to know you have a happy wife.

I love you. Happy birthday!

Cauliflower Pizza Crust

Adapted from Love and Lemons
Makes 2 pizzas

Gluten-free, this pizza crust is a fun (and fast!) alternative to a traditional crust, but it’s also different: slightly eggy in flavor and never really crisp. Think of it like a veggie-nut flatbread, and it’s great!

Ingredients:
2 cups cauliflower crumbles (about one small cauliflower or half of a really big one)
1/4 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 cup almond meal (the kind we buy)
2 eggs (the above picture shows three, which is what I tried the first time; ended up liking two better in our second batch)
salt and pepper

Directions:
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

Make the crusts:
Combine cauliflower with onion and garlic in a food processor* and pulse until crumbly, being careful not to overmix (you don’t want it to become a paste). Then stir this mixture together with garlic, almond meal, and eggs, and a couple good cracks of salt and pepper. If it seems too dry, you can add a little water; if it seems too wet, add more almond meal (I added between another 1/4 and 1/2 a cup).

*This will be considerably easier if you do it in batches. Start with a cup of cauliflower and so on. Otherwise, at least if your food processor is like mine, it takes a little longer.

Bake the crusts:
Form into pizza crusts and bake them alone for 20 minutes.

Top and bake again:
Meanwhile, sautee any veggies you want to top them with (we did tomatoes and some red pepper). Remove crusts, top as you like (we did a quick pesto of basil, Pecorino and olive oil; the sauteed veggies; more Pecorino on one // tomatoes and onions and argula on the other). Bake for another 10 minutes.

About Shanna Mallon

Shanna Mallon started Food Loves Writing back in 2008, as a way to remember her grandma and write about her life through food. Since then it's become a place leading her to a lifestyle of eating whole foods, a new home in Nashville and the love of her life, Tim. Follow Shanna on Twitter @foodloves, keep up with Food Loves Writing on Facebook and stay inspired with the monthly newsletter.