Paleo Recipe - Pizza Salad

**correction, I did NOT add 32g of cheese but rather enough cheese to get 32g of protein**

I found a recipe online for a pizza salad that looked AMAZING!  I'll be honest upfront, this doesn't take the place of pizza, however it was really good and super easy to make, which are my two ideal qualities in a good recipe.  I made a large quantity so Matt and I could both have dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow, you can scale down if you don't want to make as much.

Zone math - I eat 3 block meals, Matt eats 5 block meals.  I made 16 blocks worth of pizza salad so it would be easy to divide.  I honestly didn't count how many blocks of carbs I had because I knew I was going to come up short, but it is a paleo meal and the carbs came close so that counts for me!

What You'll Need:

• 2 packets Hormel Pepperoni (or any brand of pepperoni but the serving sizes might be off)
• 1 red onion
• 2 red bell peppers
• 1 jar banana peppers (picture shown below, I found them at Winco)
• 8 oz mushrooms
• 2 bunches of green onion
• 2 packets of Boboli pizza sauce (you can buy them in 3 packs)
• 1 small bag shredded cheddar cheese
• Olive oil
• Shredded lettuce (or lettuce of choice)

How to make it:
Start by cooking the pepperoni.  This can be done in the oven or in a pan, cook until slightly crispy.  I had to cook one packet at a time.  Save the grease from the pepperoni for later, it adds great flavor to the veggies.  Once the pepperoni is crisp, set it aside. 

If you used Hormel turkey you should have about 80g of protein (you'll need 112g to make 16 blocks).

While the pepperoni is cooking, chop up all of the veggies.  I bought already sliced mushrooms and used the following peppers, so all I had to cut was the onions (red and green) and the bell peppers.

Put everything in the pan with the saved grease from the pepperoni and let everything hang out together for a bit.  Once the veggies have caramelized a bit and have softened a tad, add back in the pepperoni (you can turn the burned off now).  Next, add the two packets of pizza sauce and some olive oil (I didn't measure but it was probably 1 tablespoon).  Stir it all together.

To get enough protein I added in 32g of shredded cheese, you can do this while it's hot so it melts or after it's cooled depending on preference, I added while it was hot.  Serve over shredded lettuce and you're done.  Or if you want, just eat it as is!

You can play around with your pizza topping ingredients as long as you stay paleo.  Enjoy!

My iPhone doesn't do a good job of taking food pictures.  It tasted WAY better than it looks!