We Review: ZPizza & Food for Lovers

So this weekend, we went shopping at Whole Foods.  We happened to be in Bellaire, about 20 miles from our home, which is where the closest Whole Foods is, so we went shopping for milk-free products.  Well, I went shopping on a lookout expedition first (I’ll cover our whole-family shopping in another post).  I picked up some kale, 365 organic olive oil and another relatively new-to-market product from Food for Lovers, an Austin-based husband and wife company.  I actually got to meet them while I was in the store; they were very nice.


Food for Lovers’ Vegan Queso
But this isn’t a blog about that couple (even though they WERE really nice).  Instead, I’m going to give a short and dirty review of the product I bought from them.  I bought their vegan queso.  I know, that sounds weird, doesn’t it?  Vegan queso?  Yup, that’s what they said.  And you know what else?  It’s SUPER good.  For the 12 oz. jar, it was $4.39, which I didn’t think was too horribly unreasonable, either.  Even better, though?  In the ENTIRE jar (which, trust me, if you can handle a little heat, you’d like this) there’s only 240 calories.  IN THE WHOLE JAR!  This stuff is like gold in a glass.  The texture is almost exactly what you find in a traditional milk-based queso, minus the super thick, “I’m-coating-your-arteries-with-this-crap" quality.  It’s very creamy, has nice, fresh-tasting ingredients that you can actually see and pronounce and leaves this burn on your lips when you’re done that keeps you wanting to go back for more.  I’m sort of a wuss when it comes to spicy, though, so it was just a touch on the warm side for me after eating an entire dinner with it on top.  What?  Don’t judge me (proudly shows my official “cheese lovers” card from my wallet).  I’d do it again, too.  With that few calories in the jar, it’s worth it just to grab some pita chips and go to town.

My Moo Rating:  5/5

ZPizza
On Sunday, the entire family went to the last Aeros (Playoffs!  Woot!) game of the season with our friends, the Wire family and their friends.  We ducked out a little early, though, and took the boys to have pizza.  But not just any pizza.  We took them to a restaurant called Zpizza, which they label as "the pure pizza revolution."  I would call it purely good.  Not great, but good.  The awesome thing about this pizza place, though, is that they serve the Daiya cheese that I reviewed earlier.  So that means you can get an entire pizza WITHOUT DAIRY.  We were very excited when we learned about this, as it meant that one of the boys’ favorite foods didn’t have to completely disappear.

The crust--simply made with flour, olive oil, salt and sugar--had a nice crispy texture to it.  It wasn’t doughy (you need gluten for that) or oily, just nice.  It would have been great with some oregano or other spices in it, but then my wife wouldn’t have liked it.

As for toppings?  On one half of the pizza, we put canadian bacon and pineapple, on one quarter of the pizza we put black olives and on the last quarter we put meatballs.

As for the eating?  Well, eating pizza with this cheese is very much like eating a pizza with American cheese on it.  The flavor is good, but the texture is off.  Apparently a little bit of Daiya goes a long way.  We’re actually going to attempt making a pizza at home using this cheese alternative, but we think that what needs to happen is that it needs to be pre-cooked with just the cheese straight on the crust, for about a 1/3 of the time that you would cook the pizza total, so that the cheese can take on a more traditional texture.  On the edges of the zpizza, it was actually a great texture, not overly crispy, but perfectly textured and flavored.  However, building a pizza the standard way (as seen here), it just has the wrong texture to it, though it’s not completely objectionable.  Three out of the four of us liked the pizza the way it was, while the little one thought that it just “didn’t taste right.”  We actually think he more meant that it didn’t feel right.  We also found that you need stronger toppings if you’re going to have this cheese, though it’s hard to put into words exactly why.  It’s like a combination of the flavor and the way the cheese reacts in your mouth.  While the canadian bacon and pineapple fared well, and the meatballs did okay, the olives didn’t pack enough punch to make their way through the Daiya.

All that being say (we’re probably turning pizza into more of a treat than a normal food for us now)  we’d definitely eat pizza again with Daiya on it.

My Moo Rating: 3/5 (next time we’ll prebake the cheese on it)

Later, I’ll be submitting a review on a recipe from the new book, Eating Like a Dinosaur by the Paleo Parents.