Meatzza: The Bear Essentials for an Easy Dinner

Chelsea has gotten it in her head – from my mom, no less – that I should eat healthier. This, for some reason, involves meatzza.

The new hated item on my diet pyramid is “gluten.” What does that mean to the layperson? Well, basically, bread. Crusts, pies and baked goods are to be minimized in this new carb-light world.

In the days of old, a guy on a hill living in a house with a giant propeller would harness the natural power of the wind and grind a really old food source known as wheat on this rolling stone device. This, in turn (get it? Turn of the mill!), would become flour and that flour would be baked into bread. Sounds like an honest way to make a meal. I mean fundamentally, vegetarians, vegans, organic-atonians, arachnophobes, claustrophobes and regular bear-like omnivores like me can get along on a meal like that. Sorry cannibals, you don’t get to dine here.

BUT it turns out, flour has been overdone over the years. On top of that, my mother (a registered nurse) said that large amounts of it does something to your insides (conversation was more like “Nate! Wheat blah blah blah blah. Bad blah blah, but meat's good.”). All in all, I found it was better for me to eat more like people in paleolithic times. Yeah, I’m realistic. I’m not going to be perfect on this diet. I can only hold off ice cream so long, and an occasional small dose is going to happen. My dad calls it the “Caveman diet.”  Mostly because saying something like, “Hi. I’m Nate. Oh! You’re also doing the paleo thing?” makes you want to punch yourself in the face and avoid eye contact with your future friends driving the all the Priuses.  So, what do I call it? BEAR DIET!

Little known fact: bears and humans BOTH like food. Yeah, and me too. I successfully eat healthier when I imagine a bear wading along the falls to catch a homeward bound salmon and then walking to shore to eat blackberries. I want to give that bear a high five. Eating well is tough because you have to give up a lot of options that are easy (mostly due to lazy repetition), but it's possible with smart substitutions and a well-stocked fridge.

The other day, I knew I was hungry. I could tell because when I walked in the kitchen, both my big dogs ran away in fear as my stomach growled. I didn’t have a ton of conventional options so I had to be crafty…like a bear. Once you get to the “I’m mad because I’m hungry” mood, it’s a little easier to pass if you can imagine that you’re a bear tromping around. And your kids think it’s funny.

So, what did I do? That’s right. I grabbed some beef. There I was, daddy bear going after a cow. Then, realizing it needed more, I grabbed some Kraft Fresh Take. It's a combination of packaged spices, a LITTLE bit of breadcrumbs and some cheese already set up to make stuff taste good. We found the Kraft Fresh Take package with the cheeses last time we were at Walmart (score: you can get 99 cents off a bag of Fresh Take here!). They had a ton of flavors, but we were digging the Italian Parmesan flavor because, really, who doesn't like parmesan? So we picked some up knowing that with pre-set portions, I don't go overboard. I mixed all that together with the beef and made a giant pizza crust patty out of it. Threw that patty in the oven and baked.  Added some parmesan and sun dried tomatoes on top for fancy bear flavor.

Voilà! A low-carb meat pizza…or MEATZZA!

I took a bite when it was nice and hot. Seriously good. To be honest, I think the sun dried tomatoes were a bit of an odd choice, but I was trying to be decorative. I might try it again and replace with mushrooms and maybe jalapeño peppers. Otherwise, awesome. And there was enough to save the extra slices (yes, there were extra…I’m also practicing moderation) for work the next day. All I had to do was flick off the tomatoes.