I’ve been mostly gluten-free since 2018–Abs! Lightness! Energy!–but I still like pizza, and my favorite veggie pizza crust is cauliflower. I first had it at a dive I can no longer name in New Brunswick, NJ, a bar bar with bar food and karaoke, the last place I expected to find a crust alternative to love forever.

C. crust occasionally pops up on menus, but the only way to control quality is to cook at home, and my Adorable husband decided to take on the project. A delicious, large crust perfectly balanced between thin and thick can be made with little more than an organic cauliflower and cage-free eggs. Doing so, though, is a kitchen-cleanness-destroying, time-devouring, multi-container-and-appliance-using process that leaves residue in the air and the cook’s hair.

Did I mention that my husband is a Really Great Husband? He has done this multiple times for me!

Given the drama required, when I noticed that Whole Foods offered a frozen cauliflower pizza crust I nabbed a box, and last night we (actually my husband, that Prince) made pizza using it. It was tasty enough, though the pizzas were tiny and the crust very thin. Sadly, the ingredients list revealed that it was actually rice-based: the first ingredient was cauliflower, but the next two (tricky!) were rice and rice oil. Then there were some other inflammatory oil and chemicals. Also there was sodium, lots and lots of sodium. No organic ingredients either.

I am able to read while shopping, but sometimes I don’t.

This product is an example of a major theme of our decaying civilization, that it is just about impossible to eat healthy food that has been packaged. No surprise really, since most people don’t want to pay much for food, nor do we differentiate between taste and nutrition. In fact, the food industry showers us with hyper-palatable foods that are addictive as well as nutrient-sparse. That’s mean though, and it’s making us sick.

Online I found other choices that seem better, including an almond-flour-based version of pizza crust and an organic cauliflower one with no other veggies or grains in the ingredients list. I want to maintain my husband’s sanity as well as his great hair, so I will probably keep experimenting with pre-packaged crust, just not too often.

Now I’ve gotta run. My regenerative beef heart and organic turtle bean chili is ready!