Caulibowl

Pair a' bowl

Every Tuesday, we get a food box from Foster's Family Farm, as part of their community-supported agriculture. It's a pretty useful set-up where we fund the farm before their growing season kicks into high gear, and in exchange, we get boxes of (mostly) vegetables weekly through to harvest season.

In years past, I've always had a hard time thinking about what ingredients we will get in any given week, and how to use them to make meals. Seems like the point of it all no? This year, I'm focusing on what are we getting and what can I make that's hopefully exciting and simple enough to make.

Tonight, I focused on cauliflower. We got a decent head in our box and I didn't really want to use it as a side like I normally would. I wanted to use it all at once in a fun way. Can cauliflower really be fun?You don't even see it in there, but I made a rice-like with it and built a rice bowl atop what turned out to be a delicious foundation.

Lunch tomorrow

Cauli-Rice

• 1 Cauliflower head, processed into rice-sized bits
• ½ chopped onion, heated in
• 1 part coconut oil & 1 part sesame oil
• Salt and pepper 

Once the onions were softened in the oil, I added the cauliflower bits to the large pan and kept them going until cooked. The sesame oil helped give the cauliflower an almost nutty flavour. I kept up the salt and pepper as it cooked until the cauliflower wasn't bland. I didn't get that toasted caramel colour on it, but probably it would have made it overdone.

 To top the bowl to dress this cauliflower rice I:

•  Pan-seared some chicken breasts (butterflied and flavoured with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and steak spice)
•  Roasted some beets (in a foil envelope with rosemary, salt, and olive oil, until tender)
•  Chopped some carrots and softened (didn't cook) in a pot of hot water leftover from boiling the egg
•  Heated frozen corn
• Chopped some cucumber
• Hard-boiled an egg to top it off 

Lastly, I sauced each bowl with a PC Lime-Jalapeno and Avocado dressing (left) and a raspberry vinaigrette dressing (right).

It was a tasty dinner that took a bit longer than I was hoping. The chicken had to be thawed since it was still quite frozen when I started, despite pulling it out the night before. Oops!

Cucumber, cauliflower, beets, and eggs from the Foster Family Farm CSA food box, week 2.