Y'all... I have done a thing.  This thing.

This thing just might be the reason for world peace one day... or the reason the Internet crashes.  I don't know.  All is possible now that this exists.  I have no shame in admitting this was my entire dinner on Super Bowl Sunday.  This recipe is the combination of two of man's greatest culinary feats: Tostones and Pizza.  Long story short: MAKE THEM.  

I'd also like to say that since starting food allergen testing, I made the beautiful (and potentially dangerous) discovery that I am, in fact, tolerant of dairy.  

For the longest time, I thought that dairy was the culprit in my terrible recurrences of dairy.  Through the Body By Butter Bootcamp, which I am still participating in, I was able to discover that high-quality cheese and keifer do not actually make me feel bad OR cause my skin to break out. I tested both goat dairy and cow's dairy with the same conclusion for both: my Scandinavian-Polish-Irish genes pulled through for me!

I'm both very excited and a little worried about this realization.  Very excited because now it means I can indulge in some cheese from time to time and use keifer as another source of probiotics.  Also excited because I will be studying abroad in Italy this summer, and while gluten is actually very easy to avoid there, I am going to LOVE having some mozzarella and gelato without fear of digestive or skin distress.

However, this leaves me with a new issue: what is making my face break out?  Well, I have an idea.  After dairy, the next thing to reintroduce on the Protocol was eggs.  I tried to take it slow by only eating yolks for the first few days, but realized after meal prepping for the week that the mayo I used to make my Primal Chicken Salad had whole eggs in it.  Well, my face has broken out this week.  I cut the eggs back out altogether these past few weeks to see if my skin would heal up, and it did.  So there's that.  Next up is to slowly test PROPERLY this time, with only yolks for probably a week and then slowly work in whites if nothing happens from that first round.  I also need to make sure that I buy eggs that are NOT from soy-fed chickens, because apparently the brand I've been loyal to for a while now feeds them FREAKING. SOY.  That is the worst food allergen for me, so honestly even that could be the issue.

Long Story short: food allergy testing is hard.

For me, an egg allergy will be harder to face than a dairy one.  I've been dairy-free for a year and a half now.  Dairy is pretty easy to avoid in most things - you just don't use it in the recipes that call for it and don't buy the few products it's included in.  But eggs... DANG. Those are one of my favorite protein sources.  I love breakfast.  And eggs are used in so many products and recipes.  I know it's totally doable, but I'm having a bit of a diva phase about this possible readjustment I'll need to be making.  In the meantime, though, don't you dare take away my Pizza Plantains that are, indeed, filled with CHEESE.

Pizza Plantains

Prep time: 5 minutes   Cook time: 30-ish minutes   Total time: 35 minutes

Yield: Varies, 2-4 servings

Ingredients 

4 green plantains

1/2 cup grass-fed shredded cheese (if tolerated) or cheese alternative (like this one)

1/2 cup coconut oil, plus more as needed

Sea salt to taste

1 cup marinara sauce, for dipping

Optional:  some other pizza toppings like preservative-free pepperoni, sausage, or other things you can stick in some cheese & get to fit between two plantains!

Directions

  1. If you know how to make Tostones, or would like step-by-step instructions, follow this guide and then skip to number 6 in these instructions.
  2. Melt coconut oil in a pan over medium heat.  There should be a thin, 1/8 inch layer of melted oil along the entire bottom of the pan.
  3. While the oil is melting and heating up, peel the plantains and slice in 1-inch thick pieces.
  4. Place plantain pieces in the hot oil and fry for about 3 minutes on each side, until the majority of each piece is golden.
  5. Remove the plantain pieces from the pan and grease the bottom of a gar or glass cup (I used a mason jar).  Use the bottom of your jar to smash each plantain piece into a flat disk, and return the disks back to the hot oil to fry again.  Keep frying them until they begin to get brown spots on each side, flipping as needed.  Sprinkle sea salt on each side of the plantain disks while they are frying this second time.
  6. Remove the disks from the pan again, and sprinkle shredded cheese and other toppings, if using, in the middle of half of them.  Take the other half of the chips and place them on top of the ones with cheese on them.  Place back onto the pan, still over medium heat, and leave them there until the cheese is melted.  Flip as needed to avoid burning the plantains.
  7. Remove the plantain cheese sandwiches from the heat and serve with marinara sauce for dipping.