No Sauce Chicken & Veggie Pizza {plus some personal info about my life}

I know some of you just read that title and several things are going through your mind.

Isn't this a cupcake blog?

If not cupcakes then at least cake or another dessert....

but pizza with NO sauce?

Where am I?!

Maybe none of that went through your head and you're really excited to read this post. Whatever. The point is you're here and that's what counts! So, why this "recipe"? (I use that term loosely here because I'm not really giving you a recipe...just an idea and a few ingredients for you to build on and make your own creation.)

First, let's talk about why mine is what it is....

No sauce Chicken & Veggie Pizza

A few years ago, I experienced my first ever migraine headache and let me tell you...I have never felt such pain in my life. I've had broken bones, chronic ear infections/aches, and low back pain and NOTHING has compared to the unbelievable pain of a true migraine. It affects everything. Light hurts. Noise hurts. Movement hurts. Sometimes just breathing too deeply hurts. Until that moment, I had no idea what real pain was. The worst part - nothing helped. I went to doctor after doctor to figure out the cause...I was in my mid-20s and all of a sudden I started having them at least twice a week with no explanation. Every test came back normal...blood work, MRIs, CT scans...and all the medicine they tried on me failed. It was probably the worst several months of my life. The headaches got so bad and frequent that in the summer of '08, just a few months after my first migraine, I ended up in the hospital. I had had one for about 2 days that just wouldn't go away and my body had had enough. 

That night, I was in class at culinary school and I looked at my friend, Maggie, and told her that something wasn't right. I couldn't really explain it, but I knew something was wrong with my body. My right arm started tingling and going numb. We went outside and I sat down on the curb in the parking lot. After several minutes, the numbness traveled into my right leg and I couldn't move that side of my body at all. Several phone calls to my parents and one 911 call later, I was on my way to the emergency room in an ambulance, thinking that I was having a stroke. Turns out that sometimes migraines can get so bad that they mimic strokes to tell us that something is wrong. You'd think that after all that, with modern medicine being what it is, the doctors and specialists would be able to tell me something. Nope. Nothing. No idea what was causing the problem and no way to help.

Finally, I just learned to live with the headaches. For the next several years, I forgot what it was like to go a moment without a dull ache in my head. It just became part of my every day life. Sometimes it would flair up into a full-blown migraine but mostly it just hung around like a shadow - always there, lingering, ready to make itself known. 

(You're probably wondering what in the world this has to do with pizza but hang on, I'm getting there)....

In February of 2010, I started my current job at Zion's Hope, a small Christian ministry here in central FL. My boss and his wife are fellow foodies and interested in all things nutrition-related. When he first heard about my headaches he told me about MSG. BINGO! A light at the end of the tunnel. Read up on this stuff - it's horrible, in just about everything processed, and wreaks all kinds of havoc in our bodies. I started doing some research and began cutting it out of my diet. Praise the Lord - I'm happy to tell you that I went 6 months without a single headache and that constant companion of mine? Gone. It was amazing. I had to seriously re-vamp my diet, grocery shopping, and eating out habits, but it was totally worth it! 

And this is why, when I make my own pizza at home, it's sauceless - not tasteless - sauceless.

Here's what I do...

I take the pizza dough that you can buy in the bakery section of the grocery store (Publix is my store of choice), roll it out, and brush it with olive oil. Then I add fresh garlic and spread it all over. My veggies of choice are onions, tomatoes (technically a fruit, I know), sometimes mushrooms, and I add chicken (browned in a skillet with salt and pepper). Then I cover it with fresh mozzarella and, voila! My very own Chicken & Veggie Pizza. It's completely "user-friendly" and can easily be adapted to your own personal preference, but I promise you - if you add the right seasonings and veggies (be creative), you won't even miss the sauce! Give it a try. I even order pizza this way when I go to an Italian restaurant or pizza place (not the chain type).

Now, am I as faithful these days to cutting out the MSG like I should be? No. However, I always know when I've had too much. Inevitably my little friend comes back for a visit and I know I need to pay more attention. But, sometimes, I decide that that sushi (soy sauce is a big contributor to my headaches and what's sushi without it?) or Chick-fil-A sandwich (yes, MSG culprit even though I LOVE them) is totally worth the headache I know I'll get later! :)

There you have it. A non-dessert post from a supposedly cupcake blogger and a tip on MSG you may not have known before. Hopefully you got something out of this post. If not, don't worry. Cupcakes are back in  1 post and counting....until then, happy reading and, more importantly, happy cutting-MSG-out-of-your-diet-ing! :)