cauliflower

Fauxtatoes

~ brixton ~ Leave a comment

If you’ll pardon my language, let me just tell you that fauxtatoes are the shit.

Fauxtatoes

If you recall, potatoes and all white foods are off-limits on this (s)low carb plan. We don’t eat potatoes all that often, but their absence is all the more pronounced when we’re ALSO not eating bread, rice, or pasta.

And this, this is why fauxtatoes are the shit. They’re made from cauliflower, steamed and pureed, then convincingly disguised with enough butter and cream cheese to almost convince you that they’re the real deal. Because they’re made from cauliflower, they aren’t absorbent – so you wouldn’t want to top them with gravy – but they do make a damned good side. We’ve been switching up the amount of cream cheese and butter, but you might as well start with the deluxe version and scale back – or scale up! – to your taste.

Trust me: if you’re trying to reduce carbs at all, fauxtatoes are your friend.

[amd-recipeseo-recipe:1]

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1107 Post-Bakefest Dinner

~ brixton ~ Leave a comment

So see, we had these for breakfast:

Chocolate + Sprinkles

That’s right.

An Array of Wonders

Homemade donuts. And a lot of them, including this beauty that I dipped myself:

A Perfect Donut

All made by the usual bakefest crew while we ate breakfast burritos and Matt and Shane stoked the fire in Olivia’s woodburning stove.

Boys at work

So you can imagine that we were on a bit of a sugar high for a few hours. And when we came down, our brains and bellies aching from too many sweets, we needed something simple and healthy. This soup wasn’t quite as creamy and wonderful as the one Suz made the other week, but it was filling without feeling heavy. Next time I think I’ll roast the cauliflower instead of boiling it, and maybe use a bit of cream in addition to the cup of shredded parmesan that Suz recommended.  So very good.

Recipes:
Cauliflower Soup from Whole Living (Nov ’10 issue)

Eating and Growing Locally: Week 16

~ brixton ~ Leave a comment

Eating:

OMG local meal

Grilled bourbon bison sausage and roasted veg – purple cauliflower, pattypan squash, red onions, and whatever else we had around.

The roasted veg is our new killer meal option – just toss whatever veg you have in the crisper with some herbs, salt & pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil, then place it all in a roasting pan in one layer.  Roast at 375 for about 45 minutes, or until everything’s cooked through and getting golden.  Really, really good with grilled meat of some sort, and also a really excellent way to use up the last bits of whatever.

Growing:

Nothing new to report, really.  Next weekend I plan on potting the herbs.  We have some chive blossoms hanging out.  Yum.

Eating and Growing Locally: Week 13

~ brixton ~ Leave a comment

Eating:

  • In an attempt to like cauliflower, I roasted a head of the purple stuff.  It was pretty tasty, but I’m still not convinced.
  • A LOT of blueberry pancakes last weekend when Erin Fae was here.
  • Peach ice cream and peach turnovers to use up the last of the peaches and the last of the puff pastry.
  • Spaghetti and meatballs with both the sauce and the meatballs from scratch.
  • Two all-local frittatas with garlic scapes (local for Erin Fae, who brought them as a gift), zucchini, onion, and tomato.  OMG so good.  I think we’ve mastered the frittata – now we just have to master getting it out of the pan:

Frittata attack!

Growing:

The first of the Amish Paste tomatoes committed tomato suicide, but I’ve been steadily picking little Beam’s Pear tomatoes throughout the week, as well as beans and the basil, which has now stayed alive for THREE months.  We also got our first red chili this week = hooray!