I cannot stop making and eating the above pizza. But nobody else seems to give two shakes of parmesan cheese about it.

Well, at first my family was actually in a state of disbelief. Listen….

Me: Look! Your mother is having pizza.

Eldest Daughter: OMG you guys, c’mere! She really is!

Youngest Son: Yay! I thought this day would never come. Yum! We get pizza in the house again. Did Dominos deliver or did you pick that up from Papa Tony’s?

Me: Neither. I made it!

Eldest Son (eyes narrowing suspiciously) You made it? With what kind of crust? That weird cauliflower stuff you mentioned?

Now here I should interject that my entire family knows I don’t eat bread. Or grain. Or pasta. Or starch. Ever since I went on the Atkins’ Diet in 1999, carbs have been a huge phobia of mine. In fact I’m so terrified of them, a pizza is something I dress up as on Halloween night to frighten the neighborhood children. But you’d never find me consuming a slice.

Me: Nope. It’s not with caulifower. I got a new recipe book and it has ingredients for a pizza crust that’s 100% chicken!

Youngest Daughter: One of your Cro-Magnon Man recipe books?

Me: You mean Paleo, dear. But never mind that. Here! Everyone have a taste! Cuz it’s chicken!

They exited the kitchen so fast, you’d think I put on the Chicken Dance song and demanded they strut their stuff.  Well what do kids know anyway? I think this healthy non-carb pizza is the best thing since sliced bread!

And I wanted to shout it from the rooftops, so I did the next best thing. I made a post about it and put it on Facebook.

 

This post sat there for days, becoming stale. No likes. Zero comments. Then slowly but surely people unceremoniously unfriended me.  What??? It’s not like I suggested preparing a crust out of the Corona Virus. This was chicken, folks. No harm, no foul — excuse the pun.

Well I wasn’t going to let that put a damper on my enthusiasm.  I made the recipe over and over. Then I got adventurous.  I substituted pesto sauce for marinara. I used creamy Alfredo sauce another time. And because it was a chicken crust, I even tried it with BBQ sauce. Delicious! You see, Atkins never said I should avoid sauce. Just the stuff most people put sauce on. But CHICKEN. What a fantastic alternative!

Eventually I phoned a girlfriend to confide.

Me: I’m quite surprised and pretty disappointed that people aren’t embracing my healthier way of having pizza. Any idea why?

Friend: Honestly Stephanie, you’re taking chicken, smashing it down real thin, baking it with tomato sauce and cheese on top. When we order that in a restaurant, we call it Chicken Parmesan.

Me: But you can pick this up and hold it in your hand like actual pizza. Want to come over for dinner tonight and see for yourself? Hello? Are you there?

Maybe people who indulge in every day flour-crusted pizza just don’t see the big deal about a healthy chicken crusted pizza. But for me it’s a huge novelty in my culinary experience. And why should I stop at pizza crust?  The sky is the limit now! I can make taco shells out of chicken. I can make burrito wraps out of chicken. I can make buns for hamburgers out of chicken. I can open a restaurant and call it “The Chicken Comes First! (Before The Egg)”

After I enthusiastically told my boyfriend how happy-go-clucky I was feeling over all of this chicken stuff and that I was making plans to go on the Shark Tank television show, he reminded me not to count my chickens before they’re hatched.

Hmmph. Everybody’s a comedian. So please leave me your best “Why did the Chicken Cross the Road?” joke in my comments section and also let me know if you want my innovative recipe. Somewhere out in cyberspace is another pizza deprived person who will surely compreHENd (see what I did there?) why chicken pizza crust is such big news.