Paleo Update: Creativity in the Kitchen

Few things inspire me more than food. You can probably tell this by looking at me. I have never been able to, or willing to, sacrifice my fun in the kitchen for anything that I found limiting to my art. Trying the primal diet, I've learned that, as is the case with most of my other creative endeavors, having parameters to work within can actually makes things more fun. It gives you a sort of challenge that just have complete free reign doesn't offer.

For instance, cauliflower - I have always known that cauliflower is somewhat special. First of all it's white, and it's probably the only white food that is good for you. Of course now that I said that, someone will just come up with more foods chalked full of whitey goodness, but let's just say the usual suspects of sugar, flour, and shortening, we can live without. Mark Twain described cauliflower as, "cabbage with a college education," and with a little smarts of your own it can be your best friend, it's one of the most versatile veggies I know.

I've had three separate encounters with the fluffy cabbage cousin this week alone. It all started with my failed attempt at roast cauliflower that ended up blackened, and thankfully got much better from there. On Wednesday night, Mike made a really delicious cauliflower puree in the style of a mashed potato. He added little bits of turkey bacon to it, and the results were fantastic. I knew I had to try one more thing that I had been reading about on primal blogs though, cauliflower rice. It's so simple it's really a non-recipe. All you do it grate the cauliflower and steam it, or saute it if you like, and it is almost unrecognizable as an impostor! I ate it with some marinated mahi-mahi and even though my brain knew that what I was eating wasn't a grain, my taste buds told a different story, a story of fluffy almost al dente white rice. Cauliflower is a win my friends, and I get the feeling I am going to be eating a lot of it in the near future.

Our other creative endeavor last night was an apple and pear puree, apple sauce style, that Mike put on the pork roast he made for himself. It was so good that I had some as a dessert. All we did was boil peeled apples and pears in water with a little orange juice for some sweetness, until they were tender, then hit them with the handy-dandy stick blender. A regular blender would have worked just as well. We loved it. We'll be making a lot more very soon!