This side dish was easy to throw together for a week night dinner. Cauliflower is a pretty mild tasting vegetable, which means you don’t need a heavy hand when it comes to seasoning. I decided to lightly sprinkle some Hungarian sweet paprika over the cauliflower with a little bit of lemon juice to switch up the taste of basic roasted cauliflower, which is something I make often.
I like to keep a careful watch on cauliflower when I roast it in the oven, tossing the cauliflower frequently so one side doesn’t get overly brown or worst case scenario – burnt. This can make the cooking time inaccurate, so I recommend poking your cauliflower with a knife periodically, to see how firm it is. Whether you like your veggies on the firmer or mushier side is up to you. I actually like my cauliflower pretty soft, but I was crazy hungry, and the sausage was cooked, so I decided to take them out of the oven when they were firm this time. It really just depends what you are in the mood for, and I was in the mood for food, immediately. Patience isn’t really my thing.
For a vegetable, beets are pretty sweet. Pun intended. Their glycemic index when cooked is 64, but their glycemic load is only 6.3. That means that when you are craving something sweet, but still want to stick to veggies, beets are a great choice. For this reason, I love adding them to vegetable juices, and eating them in a salad. At my local Whole Foods, they have this amazing beet salad that I attempted to recreate with this recipe. It’s pretty basic, but I love the taste of beets and they really shine, as the main ingredient. Plus, it tastes delicious as leftovers, which lets face it, most salads don’t.
I love cantaloupe, but it contains a decent amount of sugar and should be eaten in small portions for dessert. I also love how cantaloupe popsicles don’t need additional sweetener to taste sweet. Plus, they make a refreshing summer snack and are great for staying hydrated by the pool, or for cooling down after a workout. I know you’re likely sick of all my popsicle recipes, but it’s crazy hot in LA this summer, and they are soooo easy to make. So, I always have some ready to eat in the freezer. You never know when you are going to get a sugar craving, and sometimes it’s best if you have something already made, so you don’t go out and buy something processed you’ll later regret.
I recently got a new kitchen gadget that makes zucchini noodles! I have a spiralizer that doesn’t work very well, and have been meaning to get a more expensive one that hopefully will work. In the mean time, I got this awesome Kuhn Rikon Julienne Peeler, which was less than $20, and I thought it worked great. The reviews on amazon said it was really sharp, so you should hold your vegetable with a fork. Overall, I’m happy with my purchase.
As you can see, I put a ton of pesto on my zucchini. I love pesto, and I don’t love the taste of raw zucchini, so I thought, what the hell, and put all the pesto I made into the “noodles”. I’ve been known to eat pesto outside my fridge with a spoon, you know, like normal people do with ice cream. So I figured why not? It’s healthy, and I haven’t had Italian for awhile, so I’m going to eat every last bit…immediately. I hope you guys enjoy this recipe as much as I did.
which was less than $20, and I thought it worked great. The reviews on amazon said it was really sharp, so you should hold your vegetable with a fork. Overall, I’m happy with my purchase.