The original plan for dinner sides was lemony dill parsnips and mashed sweet potato & cauliflower. But I couldn’t find parsnips and cauliflower was buy 2 get 1 free, so…I bought 3 cauliflowers and decided to figure it out later. The cashier, Janis, asked what I was doing with so many cauliflowers. I told her I was gonna mash some up with a sweet potato and she LOST HER MIND. It was the best idea she’s ever heard. She’s never heard of that before. Mixing sweet potato and cauliflower? She had wanted to get more variety of vegetables in and this sounded like a great idea. I affirmed that the sweet potato masks the cauliflower flavor so it’s a good way to sneak it in. She was very excited and said she was going to write the idea down. I was like, you can probably just remember it, it’s a pretty straightforward concept. I was pleasantly baffled by the whole situation because I feel like hiding veggies in mashed potatoes is a pretty time-honored tradition. But I was glad I could improve Janis’s culinary world, and I was so charmed by her enthusiasm.

When I got home I flipped through my Whole30 cookbook for ideas on what to do with the other cauliflower (we’re not doing Whole30 but I like the recipes because they’re simple. When they call for something precious, I just swap it out—like instead of ghee I just use butter). One of the recipes was just a whole roasted head of cauliflower. I was like, what, you just roast the whole thing? Together? You don’t cut it up first? You just roast it all in one piece? This is the best idea I’ve ever heard. I need to write this down. Oh right it’s in the book, they wrote it down for me. Then I realized that I, too, was Janis. Who knew that the humble cauliflower could rock so many worlds.

Both cauliflowers were good. The recipe for the whole roasted one also called for garlic cloves in between the florets, but with Bren’s low FODMAP requirements I had to leave that out. So it was basically just salted & peppered roasted cauliflower. This was fine for me (as a person of both Polish and Norwegian persuasion I neither require nor desire intense flavors) but I don’t think he was a huge fan. 🙂

Thoughts on the photo: I like the negative space between the plates. I’m annoyed by the little square in the lower left; the shot box was a little too small for this. I guess I could photoshop it out but meh. The mash is perhaps a little too orange; not sure it’s very appetizing-looking lol. OK concept, meh execution, but at least I’m practicing.

Technically the whole roasted cauliflower is a new recipe, but I don’t think I’m going to count it. I’m going to count the food photo though.