Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Roasted Multi-Colored Cauliflower


Nobody hated cauliflower more than I did when I was growing up. 

I hated almost all vegetables, but I couldn’t even stand to be near the room when cauliflower was cooking! And I knew that my mom would try to make me eat it.  She’d try, but she’d never get more than 1 mouthful passed my lips.  Thank goodness she didn’t know the deal made with our sweet, veggie eating beagle Poochie.

This was my story with cauliflower.  It was on my extreme hate list.  As far as I was concerned it had no redeeming qualities.

Later in life I found out that so many of the foods I hated, I didn’t really hate.  I just hated the way they were prepared!  So, cauliflower got another try and when cooked well, it was delicious!  Who knew?

I decided to try this recipe because my sister Meryl and I were walking through a Farm Market in her town, and we saw 3 different color cauliflowers: white, orange and purple.  They were beautiful! I googled this to see if there was something strange going on and there wasn't.  No food coloring, no genetic engineering, just years of selective breeding. They may even have some extra health benefits like higher beta carotene levels. Pretty, healthy AND delicious!  Yum!

I put the recipe together and my sister Carol did the cooking. Everyone hesitated because of the colors, but once they tried it, they loved it! Yay!  We're heading into winter, the perfect time to think up more cauliflower recipes!

Note: This recipe is fine for regular white cauliflower or multi-colored cauliflower.  I chose to cook with the multicolored for asthetic reasons only.  It was so pretty!

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Thursday, November 8, 2012

Hurricane Sandy Skillet Apple Crisp with Granola (or Kashi)

Hurricane Sandy Apple Crisp with Kashi Go Lean
and Butter Pecan Ice Cream
What do you do when you know a hurricane is coming?  If you’re me, you cook. 
I was at my sister Meryl’s house and we were prepared for a big dinner.  We knew there would be a lot of people to feed, so we had that part all planned.  But what would we have for dessert?
Meryl asked me to use some apples she bought at a local farm market.  They were small, windfall apples of all different sorts and they didn’t look so great, but what the heck, they were there, so I’d use them. 
I wanted something easier to make than an apple pie, but something just as comforting.  Maybe even more comforting, and then I the idea popped.  An apple crisp, cooked in a cast iron skillet.  What could be more homey than that?
We had the cast iron skillet, we had the apples, we had really great cinnamon that Meryl got in Morocco, but I didn’t want to use the typical bread crumb topping.  Granola would be great, but she didn’t have any and the winds were picking up so there was no way I was going out to buy any, Then I saw it!  Kashi Go Lean Crisp! Perfect (I hoped). 
I had to hurry because we needed the stove and it is electric – we could lose it at any minute. 
I toasted the Kashi with some butter in the skillet, and then added the apples sugar and cinnamon.  The house smelled like a you'd imagine a house would smell in the 1950s.  Like home. Delicious.
Then into the oven it went.  Everyone who walked into the house asked what I was cooking that smelled so wonderful.  We took it out of the oven to cool, sat down for dinner, and perfect timing, we lost electricity. 
Marc, my son and toughest critic said it was the only apple dessert he really liked.  Yay!  It was a winner, and the best part is, you don’t have to follow the recipe specifically.  If you don’t have one thing, use another.  It’s an old time American recipe and I’m sure there was a different version in each home.  This will now be my standard.

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