“Tons of customers are buying cauliflower pizza crusts,” my friend, a part-time checker at a local fine-foods store informed me. I kind of liken cauliflower pizza crust to spaghetti-squash “noodles.” Not feeling it….

But, if that’s what’s trending, maybe cauliflower pizza crust isn’t so bad. My semi-open mind must have been sending out veggie-pizza-crust vibes because somehow, my grocery cart sidled up in front of the Trader Joe’s frozen food section where two kinds of pizza crust were displayed.

My Pick.

On the left, a cauliflower pizza crust and on the right, a broccoli-kale with olive oil and salt version. Even though the picture of circular, compacted mush looked really healthy and kind of gross, the sea-salt was a game-changer. Maybe, just maybe, the crust would taste like real pizza crust with a lot of salt–sort of the savory version of a spoonful-of-sugar scenario. I did notice corn flour was in both, something to bind all the healthy stuff together. It’s practically like real pizza dough, flour a key ingredient. Corn or wheat, is there really a difference?

Hmmm. This just might be a cool way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, eating food that’s supposed to be green instead of dyed food like the scrambled eggs we fed the boys when they were little.

“I bet I won’t even notice the broccoli,” I whispered to myself. As calcium and iron rich as broccoli claims, I avoid it almost as much as my least favorite vegetable: cauliflower. I grabbed the green box and headed straight to the pepperoni. For a split second, I did think, “Pepperoni and cheese sort of cancel out the healthiness of the green. What’s the point?” The pepperoni package clattered into my shopping cart anyway, along with prosciutto for a meat-lovers delight.

As soon as I got home, I fired up the oven after carefully placing the pizza brick on the second rack. I was going to make my experience as authentic as possible.

The directions were a little more complicated than I expected. First, I had to bake the “crust” top side down. Which is the top? It all looked flat to me. I picked the side with a slight lip, the one to hold back all that sauce I planned on plastering across the top, edge to edge. After twelve minutes, I flipped over the crust to bake another twelve minutes.

Finally, I could cover the crust like I would a regular pizza: sauce, cheese and meat. I baked it another seven minutes and pulled my healthy masterpiece from the oven. By this time, Hubby was home, my Organic/Gluten-Free Man, his choice. I thought he would be proud of me going all veggie and no flour.

Tastes like it looks.

“I don’t think that is going to taste very good,” he said as he looked up at me with raised eyebrows.

“Come on, the olive oil, salt…and the kale. Those are good things.” I defended my trial, the parts I liked.

I cut a slice from the pizza pie and clipped of the point with my front teeth. “Hmm. I think it tastes like eggplant parmesan, without the eggplant and parmesan.  Wanna try it?”

“A tiny bite,” he said like I would if he offered me a taste of his taco with extra-hella-hot hot sauce. He chewed and swallowed hard, like choking down a fat pill.

“Well?” I asked.

He took a long slurp of his super-healthy smoothie of eighteen ingredients, mostly vegetables—sans pepperoni. The verdict from Mr. Healthy:

“If you are going to eat a pizza, eat a pizza.”

Green Beer is looking pretty good for St. Patty’s Day—with regular pizza