Who Loves Cauliflower? After this Everyone Will!

I have loved cauliflower for years now. I have only just recently been cooking with it though. I used to love it at my favorite Indian restaurant in Hawaii. India Cafe. My friend Cris and I would go there all the time! We loved it! Anyways, they had this amazing cauliflower korma! My mouth is watering just thinking of it! It was so soft and tender and it seemed that it just soaked up the flavors of the spices and coconut milk it was cooked in.

Well, I haven't figured out how to make that myself, even though this past minute I have been thinking of how to make it. But there are things I have cooked cauliflower in that are very tasty. I like to put it in my Thai curry recipes, in my quinoa mac and cheese, and lately I have made pizza bites and roasted cauliflower from recipes that I have found on Pintrest.

My friend Cris who would go with me to India Cafe had given me this list of whole foods and what their health benefits are. I still have that paper after all these years. That paper says, "Cauliflower, cruciferous family member that contains many of the same cancer-fighting, hormone-regulating compounds as its cousins, broccoli and cabbage. Specifically thought to help ward off breast and colon cancers. Eat raw or lightly cooked."

Aleks, his sister and I were talking about cauliflower last night and he brought up how people say that we should eat colored foods and that they are more nutritious than white foods. Most diet people say to stay away from white things like white bread, white rice or potatoes and is cauliflower really that good for you? So I looked it up online, from what I found it confirmed what the paper that Cris gave me and said that there were many health benefits. One that we really liked was that it helps in the fighting of cancer and also in the prevention of cancer.

Yesterday I made two recipes, cauliflower pizza bites and roasted cauliflower. These were the recipes that I found on Pintrest. They turned out real good. The pizza bites, since I made them in regular muffin tins so they came out to be 50 calories each. If you want them smaller you can put them in mini muffin tins for a total of 25 calories each. The other cauliflower recipe I made was roasted cauliflower. Aleks says it's the best thing I ever made. Which was surprising because he loves my cooking and there are some pretty amazing things I make, if I do say so myself.

So here are the two recipes I made yesterday.
Cauliflower Pizza Bites that I got off Pintrest by Damy Health

First you got to grate the cauliflower. This could take just a little while. If I had a food processor then I would probably try that but I had to use a cheese grater.

Put the grated cauliflower in a pan and let cook till tender.

While its cooking separate 2 eggs. It should make about 1/4 cup of whites. Save the yolks. I did and I am keeping it for some curd.

Then add 1 cup of cottage cheese to the whites and add 1 tsp of dried oregano 2 tsp of Italian seasonings. Damy says parsley but I didn't have any so... I also put a squirt of Saracha in mine as well.

Damy says  that hot sauce and coconut oil are optional. I didn't use the coconut oil because that would add a bunch of calories and that would defeat the purpose. Then 1/4 tsp of garlic powder. Blend that up in your food processor, like I said I didn't have one so I used the blender till smooth. It worked fine.

Then add the wet mixture to the cooled cauliflower. I didn't let mine cool too much because I am kinda lazy and I wanted to hurry up and make them.

Damy says that you got to press the mixture into the pan otherwise they fall apart. So I pressed my "dough" into the pan. It is wet so it's not like packing brown sugar its mostly just like making sure there are no air pockets.

Then you throw it in the oven at 450 degrees. Let it cool in the pan for 5 minutes so it has time to set and wont fall apart.

If you notice on my pan it has those little black dots That is the Pam that I used to coat the pan. After being in the oven it makes those spots. I just wiped them off. No big deal.

The recipe said that to make two cups of grated cauliflower you would need about a whole head but I only needed 2/3s of mine. It must have been a huge noggin! So with the remaining I cut it up and roasted it.

I also found this recipe on Pintrest  to came from Design Her Momma.

 Cut the florets into bit sized pieces and in a bowl put the juice of 1/2 a lemon and 1 Tbl of olive oil and salt and pepper. Normally when I make things like this I like to use my big glass bowl but I had just used it and had already put it in the dishwasher and started it. So I used this Tupperware which actually turned out to be a genius idea. I'll show you in a minute.

 Then throw in the cauliflower and put on the lid. Shake the Tupperware till it is all coated with the lemon oil mixture! How easy was that? I think I will make it like this from now on! Although I think next time I will add cabbage.

Anyways after its all mixed up and coated then put it in a pan. The first time I made it I put it on a cookie sheet this time I put it in my new Le Creuset pan that Aleks mom gave me.

After its all arranged then grate some Parmesan on top and roast for 25-30 minutes in a 450 degree oven. This is a yummy snack. 

If you use a whole head of cauliflower and separate it into 6 servings then each serving is only 50 calories. Not only is it good for you but super super tasty. I think I am going to go get some out of the fridge right now!

PS. You probably noticed the change in the pictures about half way through. I used an app on my phone for the second half of the pictures. I should have done them all but I messed up and didn't know how to bring the pictures back to edit them. Anyways, all this to say, I am trying to take better pictures and I would love it if you could let me know which ones you like better. 

New Cookbooks and Strawberry Shortcake.

Looit what my sister gave me! She read on my blog about how I don't have any cook books but that it was alright because I had the internet. So she had these ready for me when I came to visit her! I love it!

We grew up using this Good House Keeping repice book. My mom had a copy. My dad also has his own copy that belonged to his mother. Which to me makes it even cooler. I never got to meet my grandmothers so I always longed for one. Anyways, my sister found hers at the used book store and later found one for me as well! I am so stoked to have it.

We went to Costco the other day and we bought a huge basket of strawberries to share with Aleks mom but she only took about a quarter of them. I knew I could not eat enough strawberries and cottage cheese, or just eat all the strawberries before they went wilted so I thought I wanted strawberry shortcake since at the end of the week I will be starting a biggest loser competition and will not be eating yummy yummy goodnesses like this.

Then, I remembered my cookbook and all the times as a teenager I made strawberry shortcake from this recipe book! I was so excited!

As I read the recipe, getting my ingredients together I did not remember useing lemon zest in my recipe when I was younger. But I figured it was something I probably would have left out anyway. Now that I am grown up and have a more developed palate I decided to use some lime zest seeing as I had a lime and had used half of it in my Thai tacos I had made earlier that day.

This is really an easy recipe. Just take your two cups of flour and mix in the baing powder, salt, sugar and zest. Then cut in the butter till it is lumpy.

Add an egg.

 And milk.

Till it just holds together.

Then press into an oiled baking pan or pie dish and bake for 35-40 minutes at 425 degrees.

While its baing cut up the strawberries.

Add a tablespoon or two of brown sugar.

 Chill in the fridge till ready to eat.

After the shortcake has cooled then slice a piece in half and layer with strawberries and whipping cream. I was lazy and did not whip my cream.

But if you want that texture then get your hand mixer out and whip the cream with a little vanilla till peaks form. Some people like the cream to be sweet but I personally think that the strawberries are sweet enough that it doesn't need more sugar. But if you want it sweet then add a little powdered sugar since we want it to be a smooth creamy texture. Well I hope you enjoy!

Veggie Delight!

I got all these veggies for $16.29!!! What a good deal!!! If you are from the mainland you might not be too impressed but if you are from Hawaii then you know why I am so excited. To get all these vegetables in HI would cost me over $50!

I will probably post some of what I will be doing with these. I have started my biggest loser completion less than a week ago. I need to eat more veggies cuz they are less in calories and I can eat more. Plus I love vegetables. It was just hard in HI because everything was so expensive. I am excited about all the options.

Anyways, I have been almost ready to post my article about my strawberry shortcake I just have to add a couple pictures. At our house the Internet is all messed up. We think it might be the modem but who knows. So I am posting from my phone. Hopefully it will get fixed today and I can get that post up.