Sunday, January 20, 2013

Cauliflower Soup

So -- I have been thinking a lot about how this shift of diet is going to work. Whenever I embark on something new, it seems that I completely shut down -- as if to curl myself into a proverbial fetal position and refuse to adapt. The other day I am pretty sure I had coconut flakes for dinner. I am determined to change this. I pulled out all sorts of cook books -- and what I realized is that the whole canvas of food I am accustomed to has got to change.

In the meantime, I am in a cabin in the woods for the weekend. Writing.

When I left, my first thought was to stop at the store and pick up a bunch of prepared food, simply so that I wouldn't have to think about food at all for a few days.

I'm so tired of thinking about food.

But I didn't! I grabbed, instead, a few eggs, some fruit, a head of cauliflower, an onion, some rice and a jar of applesauce. In retrospect, I could have have used a jar of peanut butter... but I actually cooked everything I brought! I'm ridiculously proud of this.

I did have a rather large take-out fail last night for dinner -- while I stuck with everything and ordered the grilled salmon, even feeding the legendary breadsticks remorsefully to the dog -- I neglected to inform them of the dairy issue, and the container was swimming in butter... sigh.

It interests me how variable tastes are...
how they shift so that the butter last night, which would have tasted ordinary a month ago -- and luxurious two weeks ago -- felt too rich to me last night.

I wonder if simplicity breeds contentment, in a way...
I wonder if the converse is also true.

Anyway --

you take an onion -- diced -- sauté in olive oil -- stir in the cauliflower and a cup or two of water and broth... salt... I think it could have used some time and lemon -- pepper -- cover the whole thing and cook until smooshable. this is a soup I think I learned from Epicurious... usually I puree it and the original recipe is fabulous with a really good parmesan cheese -- but I left it sort of smashed. The next day I added rice and an egg. It was really good.

Adaptation is such a funny thing.
It takes so much work and then seems so simple all of a sudden.





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