Tree of Life

I saw mention of cauliflower steaks in The Kind Diet and haven’t been able to stop thinking about them. I didn’t go back to the recipe because I’m lazy like that, but if I remember correctly it requires little more than slicing a head of cauliflower into 1-inch steaks and roasting in the oven. Can do.

Steak?

I sliced this cauliflower into about three steaks and a small pile of broken pieces that wouldn’t maintain their steak-like shape. Then I just threw them on a sheet pan with some olive oil, salt and dill and roasted on 425 for about 20 minutes on each side.

40 minutes is a long time

And finally…

Tah dah

So simple and so so sooooo good. We had our cauliflower steaks over a bed of spinach with avocado and a side of last night’s veggie pizza.

Strangely perfect. Perfectly strange?

Bow down to me.

All rise for His Royal Highness… King of Veggie Pizzas. You may be seated.

OK, so maybe this wasn’t that good (yes it was), but I’m pretty excited about it considering I pulled the “recipe” right out of thin air.

I started with a Bob’s Red Mill gluten-free crust mix and topped it with my green sauce (sans green onions but still awesome) and grilled onions, zucchini and asparagus.

BEHOLD

I had to pull out all the stops on this and use every kitchen appliance Stew has gotten me: KitchenAid mixer for the crust, Breville panini press for the grilled veggies, immersion blender food processor attachment (that I bought but only because he convinced me it was worth it) for the green sauce and the Cadillac of pizza cutters… for cutting. I would’ve used my fancy pants roller but sometimes you’re hungry and you think using your hands is faster. It is not.

The whole adventure took me about 30 minutes. Not bad if you ignore the fact that Rachel Ray also would have made a side and a dessert in that amount of time.

Oat crackers

Oats. Salt. Baking soda. Olive oil. Water.

That’s all it takes to make delicious homemade crackers.

I think an unfortunate misconception among American consumers is that food must come from a factory because it’s difficult to make. Can you blame us for thinking that way? Take a look at the list of ingredients in most packaged foods. It’d be impossible to replicate that at home.

That’s because you don’t want to replicate that crap at home. Because you can make something better and easier and cleaner.

I was excited to try this oat cracker recipe from Wheatless and Meatless after being disappointed in the ingredient lists on many gluten-free food packages. It would appear that all kinds of funky stuff is required to replace the missing wheat and gluten in many packaged foods. Not so. This simple recipe yields a quality cracker and proves you can, in fact, replicate you favorite snacks at home without all the garbage they add at the factory.

Look forward to many a variation on this basic recipe. It just screams for the addition of herbs, spices and the like.

Note: The recipe calls for 2 tsp of salt. I thought that was a lot so I used about half that and my crackers are still a bit on the salty side.

Veggie burger... made of vegetables

Ever wonder why when you buy a “veggie” burger in the frozen food section, the ingredient list is often severely lacking in vegetables? Dr. Praeger burgers excluded, a lot of veggie burgers are full of anything but vegetables. That’s why it’s fun to make them at home. Here’s a quick and (very) easy recipe from Diet, Dessert and Dogs that I saw adapted on Oh She Glows.

Ricki used garbanzo flour and Angela used spelt. I went with oat flour and it worked very nicely. To make oat flour, just put whole oats in a coffee grinder and go to town.

These burgers are really great and are filled with red pepper, chickpeas, spinach, carrot, sunflower seeds, onion, dill, basil and all kinds of awesome. Definitely the best burgers I’ve made at home.