Last May one of you (Heidi) asked what I do about the endless school fundraisers that seem to invariably involve junk food. Our school has a monthly restaurant night, and I can completely relate to the dilemma of wanting to support the school but not the fast food burger joint that they're partnering with for the evening. Last year we just sort of picked and chose the few places that actually had something for us to eat on the menu even if it wasn't super great quality food. We eat healthy most of the time, so I don't stress out too much when my kids eat a thin wedge of white bread with a smear of tomato sauce for dinner one night at the pizza parlor with their pals, or really even more likely, don't even eat a piece of pizza because they're too busy "playing" video games. (Please don't tell the boy that those machines take quarters.)
So, I changed up my approach this year. I decided that I would just be in charge of fundraising for the preschool. This approach was perhaps a bit rash and explains why I haven't written or cooked since early August. This job is incredibly time consuming, but somebody's got to do it right? Might as well be the vegan. If you are considering going this route yourself, and you have a baby at home, please reconsider.
So for the most part, with our somewhat limited suburban resources, I have set up moderately healthy restaurant nights for the rest of the year at places that all have some sort of vegan option. But there are still three pizza nights on the agenda. And your average pizza ordered without cheese needs a bit of salt, a bit of fat, and a bit of nutritional consequence.
And that's why amidst the baby socks and snack wrappers and finger puppets and sippy cup lids, (all things that I really just found in my purse, in addition to two legos and one packet of non-dairy creamer and approximately a kajillion receipts. I am totally cleaning out my purse as soon as we're done here.) I usually have a small jar of pizza shake. It's called pizza shake because we shake it on take-out pizza. I wouldn't be surprised if you make something similar. I've been tweaking this for about a decade and have settled on this recipe (at least for the time being).
Pizza Shake
You might find that you also like this anywhere that you might use parmesan cheese. For cooking, I prefer almond meal. I usually quadruple this recipe and keep it in a big jar in the fridge.1/4 cup nutritional yeast
2 tablespoons almond or flax meal
1 teaspoon nondairy butter
1 teaspoon misoMix together with a fork until combined. It will be the texture of fairly fine bread crumbs.
Store in the fridge, but it will do just fine in your purse for a couple hours.
