Foil Packet Cauliflower

One night Trevor and I decided to just grill everything. Trevor was lucky enough to get an early birthday present and a new infrared grill is now sitting on our back deck (thank you!) We are trying to eat a bit healthier than usual so we did a veggie medley and salmon. We had all sorts of fun as presented in the photos below! 

I made a foil packet for the cauliflower. I included pads of butter, salt and garlic powder. We put it on the grill at medium/high for maybe 10-15 minutes. It turned out great! You can do so much with foil packets on the grill. Anyone have a favorite?

Mashed Cauliflower

This next one didn't turn out as planned. You can find beautiful photos if you Google "Mashed Cauliflower" in the images section. These photos look just like mashed potatoes and look delicious. However, mine did not. I wish I could blame it on some recipe, but I just read a bunch of different ones and compiled them in my head. Despite the fact that they didn't look like mashed potatoes (more like hot white coleslaw) they tasted great. Definitely plan to do these again, but with some tweaks trying to get that beautiful fluffy quality! If you have any suggestions... please let me know!

Finished product! I served with a pork tenderloin.

Boil Cauliflower (I think I should have boiled longer)

Mash with garlic and butter. I didn't add any liquid and
next time I need to figure out a way to make it even drier.

Grilled Cauliflower Steaks

First up in the Cauliflower Adventure was a rather unique twist to the vegetable. In my search for cauliflower recipes, I came across the blog Eighty Twenty and specifically, this post.

I was intrigued and decided to try this vegetarian alternative to steaks. Now don't get me wrong... I am the furthest thing from a vegetarian (as evidenced by the whole reason for this blog!) But who knows?! Maybe this could be a nice compliment to a great steak.

Finished product!

Simple ingredients

Slice head of cauliflower into "steaks"
and coat with ingredients above

Put directly on medium heat grill
and cook on both sides for 5-7 minutes

As you can see I made a couple of changes as I completely forgot about the Parmesan cheese. Oops! Another thing I'd do differently is to not skimp on the ingredients. I didn't want to have all the oil and balsamic vinegar drip everywhere, but in hindsight, I should have just let it drip! We needed to pour more ingredients on after as it was pretty bland. I think if I had been more generous it would have been better. But this was pretty easy and I'd like to try it again!

July is Cauliflower Month!

Sometimes I feel like Cauliflower is a poor cousin to Broccoli... but not this month! Cauliflower will be first and finally get the credit it deserves! We'll grill it, roast it and mash it. And hopefully learn to love it!

Cream Peas

On the last night of June, we had our friends Andy and Heather over for a BBQ. We had wonderful Hanger Steaks which if you haven't yet found the joy that is a Hanger Steak, I suggest you seek them out. It's the meat under the jaw of a cow and there is only one Hanger Steak per cow. Trevor's brother, Bryan, first introduced them to us and we've had them several times since. A little hard to find, but well worth the effort. We served the Hanger Steaks with some grilled potato packets, salad and Cream Peas. The peas were an after thought and we weren't sure if Andy and Heather liked peas... hence the salad just in case. However, the peas turned out great! I'm sure the healthiness of the peas is washed out by the butter and cream, but at least it's a "wash" instead of a loss right?!

You can find the recipe I used here. They were very easy. I think next time I might try using milk instead of cream to make them a tiny bit healthier. 

Finished product read to serve!
They do seem to get cold rather fast, so it's not a make ahead dish.

Letting the peas come to a boil in water and salt.

Added in the butter, and cream/flour/sugar mixture.

Garden Pea Salad

I know I say that every recipe is easy... but this one might be the easiest so far. Canned peas? Check. Pre Hard Boiled Eggs? Check. Bacon Bits? Check. Could not be any easier. 

The last Pea post was just ok in regards to the peas, they were a bit sweet for me in that dish. Whoa... never thought I'd ever say something was too sweet. But this salad was delicious. Trevor and I had my parents over for dinner and we paired the salad with steak and potatoes. 

Since this was so easy, I don't have a lot of photos of the process. You can find the recipe here: Paula Deen's Garden Pea Salad. I did doctor it up with some bacon bits... how could I not?! I'm surprised Paula hadn't already put them in!

Pasta with Peas, Shrimp, Mushrooms and Bacon

Yum! That's all I need to say about this meal. I started with this basic recipe for Angel Hair Pasta with Bacon and Peas from Martha Stewart. But of course... I doctored it up! I do need to give some credit to Trevor for his ideas to add stuff... if it was just me it would have been very plain. 

Apparently most of the vegetables I've been choosing go great with bacon... or maybe it's that bacon goes great with everything!

Finished product... of course sprinkled with bacon!

How can you go wrong with these ingredients?!

Finely slice the shallots... hmmm is that fine enough?!

Saute the shallots and mushrooms in the bacon grease

Add in the shrimp, beautiful shrimp from Zupan's here in Portland.

Add in cream and peas, again both from Oregon!

Finally toss in cooked noodles and some extra pasta water.