Just call me Julia Child

Okay, maybe not quite Julia Child, but I am Julia and I'm cooking...and I like children? Not to eat of course. By the way have any of you seen the film Julie & Julia? It's cute & it makes you want to cook...or just extremely hungry.

Anyway--last night I decided to have some culinary adventures of my own. I had a head of cauliflower that I bought last week for the purpose of making fake mashed potatoes. I had the night free so I figured it would be the perfect opportunity. With a basic idea of how to make them, I set forth.

I broke the head of cauliflower into small sections and put it in a dish covered with saran wrap. I microwaved it for about 9 minutes (testing how tender they were after 5 and 8 minutes). Then I transferred them to a larger bowl and commenced the mashing. Now it might have been easier with an actual potato masher...however due to my limited kitchen accessories, I started with a fork and then ended up using a small whisk which ended up working fine. I probably could have also put it through a food processor, but who has that kind of time?

After getting the cauliflower into a mushy state, I proceeded to add ingredients. Milk, butter, reduced fat cheese, salt, pepper. I wasn't sure exactly what to put in, but I wanted them to be flavorful. I didn't have any chives or anything like I'd seen recommended in other recipes, so I was improvising. I probably put in more butter than I should have (and I chose real butter over Smart Balance, but I might try them another time using SB) and the cheese made no difference. They were kind of bland until I decided to add some Fig flavored balsamic vinegar, which made a huge difference. The texture was close to mashed potatoes but certainly not the same. But they were tasty and I enjoyed them. I would probably make them again. I was thinking I could possibly add some butternut squash or some kind of flavorful fall root vegetable to change things up. Maybe beets? Yams are good too. I saw recipes that included potatoes with the cauliflower--maybe to add more of that real mashed potato texture.


After spending far too much time on my fake mashed potatoes, I realized I had nothing else prepared for dinner, so I decided to pull out some chicken from the freezer. Again, I was kind of going blindly into this, so I tried to figure out how I wanted to cook the chicken. I cut it up into small chunks so it would cook faster. And then I decided I wanted to try something different. And what, out of all things, did I pick to cook the chicken in? Peanut butter. Whaaaaaaaaaaat?

I had no idea how it would turn out, but I just went with it. I spooned about 1Tbs of peanut butter (chunky style) into the pan, and then decided that it needed to be more of a sauce, so I threw some yogurt into the pan as well (about 2Tbs vanilla). I whisked it together right in the pan and then threw the chicken chunks in there to cook. They cooked pretty quickly considering they were frozen an seemed to work nicely in the yogurt/PB sauce. It got a little thicker with the heat, and was done in about 10 minutes.

Let me tell you--I am a cooking genius. This chicken was absolutely delicious, and if any of you are fans of Thai food, was basically a chicken sate flavor. I might add some kind of spice to it next time for something different, but it had more than enough flavor as it was. YUM.


So I put my fake mashed potatoes and peanut butter chicken on a plate, added some sliced cucumbers, and sat to consume my culinary masterpiece. Color wise it was very bland, but the taste more than made up for the lack of hue.

Julia Child I may not be, but I'm still proud of my meal & can't wait to try some other recipes and spontaneous food-ventures.

Until next time