Luke here. About a month and a half ago I was reading my favorite blog, Mark’s Daily Apple, which I read…daily. I’ve been on the lookout for healthy alternatives to our favorite foods, and when Mark put a link to this recipe from one of my other favorite bloggers, Justin Owings of  Birthday Shoes, I knew we had a winner.

Birthday Shoes is a Vibram FiveFingers fan blog – definitely not where I typically turn for new food ideas, but buyoff from two of my favorite bloggers is enough for me to give it a shot.

Liz makes some amazing pizza, and one of our favorite restaurants in Chicago is Pequod’s, but we’ve been shunning most refined carbs for quite a while now. The big selling point of the recipe I had found was that it was for a pizza recipe with no bread – and we’re not talking about some cheese and pepperoni heated up in a bowl either. This was a MEATza.

A meatza is a vegetarian’s worst nightmare. It is a pizza where the crust is literally made out of ground beef. A LOT of ground beef. Like 8 quarter pounders worth. In other words, it was perfect.

I immediately recommended it to Liz, but she had other ideas…and more ideas…then a few more ideas…then some final ideas…and 6 weeks later I still hadn’t had any meatza. So last weekend, after spending all day Saturday and half the day Sunday with Liz stressing over placecards, programs, table seating, etc., etc., I knew this was going to be my big chance to finally feast on some meatza.

I gently asked, “Honey, why don’t you let me handle dinner for your Sunday Supper Series.” I took her dejected grunts as confirmation of her desire to also enjoy some meatza.

I picked up two pounds of 90/10 free range ground beef, an onion, garlic, green pepper, pepperoni, mozzarella cheese , and Trader Joe’s pizza sauce. In total, I spent about $20, although I already had the rest of the spices and parmesan cheese to follow the recipe.

I basically followed Justin’s (BirthdayShoes.com) recipe exactly, so I won’t repeat it. You can find the recipe here. The only differences:

• I didn’t have nearly as much grease as to drain off as Justin describes, which might be from using 90/10 ground beef rather than the 80/20 that Justin uses. I think 90/10 was perfectly sufficient though because you add a lot of spices to the meat already so it is still packed with plenty of flavor.
• I nixed the garlic salt since I had already added 3 cloves of minced garlic as toppings.
• Liz hates fungus, so no ‘shrooms.

Liz and I each had a piece and a half of the pie, which seems pretty weak until you consider that we each ate about 3 quarter pounders worth of beef (+topppings). From that perspective (and the fact that even Liz went back for seconds) testifies to the deliciousness of the meatza.