Cauliflower Pizza Crust

Baked Crust before adding toppings

This post is ahead of schedule because one of my sisters asked for the recipe. Soon I will make this again and next time I'll take photos. (Photos added 3-7-13). This recipe came from another sister who has been encouraging us to reduce or eliminate grains from our diet.  I'll go for "reduce" at this point, but this may be the reason the holiday pounds are still hanging around.

This was made for friends January 11th.  The ladies enjoyed it very much, the men not so much and the children protested. Never mind they were not required to eat it.  The home made pizza crust from Prairie Gold Whole Wheat was available for them.  Come to think about it, I don't think they even tried this.  I think they just emphatically stated they wouldn't.  Of course I knew that and chose my battles a little more carefully.

Cauliflower puree after it is cooked on the stove.

Cauliflower Pizza Crust

1 head cauliflower
2 large eggs, lightly beaten 

2 cups shredded part skim mozzarella
4 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

In a food processor, grind up the cauliflower. 

Cook on stove top with a little water until soft.   Waterless cookware method:  Put about one cup of water in a 10" skillet with lid, add ground cauliflower, cover and cook at 4 (just below medium) for  5 minutes.  Turn down to 2  (low) and continue cooking with the lid on for 25 minutes. 

Remove and let cool.  

Heat oven to 425 degrees.

Mix with egg, mozzarella, Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. Once combined, pat into the Demarle At Home Grande (11 x 19)  Flexipat.  Bake for 25 minutes, or until golden.

Top the pizza.  Bake in the oven until cheese is melted and bubbly, another 10 minutes. Top with basil before serving. I didn't have basil this time so did without.

Favorite topping:  cream cheese, spinach, artichoke hearts, shredded, grilled chicken, Parmesan cheese.

Photos, finally:

 Eggs, parmesan, mozzarella, cooked cauliflower puree all ready to combine.

Ingredients stirred together.

 Mixture pressed into grande flexipat by Demarle and ready to bake.

After baking for 25 minutes and wWith cream cheese added.

Then with spinach, artichoke hearts, grilled chicken bits and parmesan cheese added on top of the cream cheese.

This is has been baked for 10 minutes at 425 degrees.

I don't need a wheat crust when I can have this.  Great alternative!

Breakfast On The Run by Guest Writer and Daughter

Hello Faithful Followers,

My amazing daughter is the first guest writer on the blog.  Probably she will be a regular contributor.  I shouldn't have worried that my girl who didn't like to spend much time in the kitchen as a teenager would turn out to be an accomplished cook.  She puts wonderful, healthy meals on her family's table with great regularity.  Anyone who has done that knows the discipline required to accomplish this day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year.  I counseled her just before her wedding that she better make up her mind to be a cook and enjoy the process.  She said with such confidence, "I will!"  I could do nothing more than wait and see.  She makes me proud.

By Tish:

When my husband was a young boy, he got into the habit of getting out of bed with only enough time to get dressed and wash his hair before running out to the school bus.  Years later, his morning routine is much the same, and unless breakfast is something he can eat while driving a manual transmission, he skips it.

·         I don’t keep granola bars on hand because they have never satisfied me (a real protein gal).

·         A couple of years ago, he was in a routine of taking a bowl of cereal along with him. The first time the contents of the cereal bowl slopped out the side as he was turning a corner was the last time he ever took cereal. 

·         More recently, I would make a big batch of homemade granola and keep frozen fruit and yogurt on hand to eat it with. This had mixed results. Often, the hands-on involvement of actually assembling a bowl of granola, fruit and yogurt took too long, and breakfast was skipped once again.

·         This mama of two young children loves her sleep and is not real chipper in the morning. Therefore, cooking a hot breakfast for him is usually beyond my capabilities, especially at 6 a.m.

One of my goals for 2013 was to come up with a breakfast solution for him that addressed the above issues. I scoured recipes until I found one that looked really yummy. We gave it a try for dinner one night and it quickly disappeared. With a few adaptations to suit our tastes, it was A WINNER!! I now make 6 batches at once, freeze them and then thaw about a week’s worth at a time. He pops them in the microwave for 2 minutes while he is lacing up his work boots. Since he eats 3 cups each morning, it is almost 6 weeks before I need to do another big cooking spree!

Amazing Muffin Cups

Ingredients:

• 3 cups frozen shredded hash browns, thawed
• 3 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper
• 12 links breakfast sausage, or equivalent amount of ground sausage or cooked crumbled bacon
• 6 eggs
• 2 cups Shredded 4-Cheese Mexican blend cheese
• Garlic Powder to taste, optional
• Dill Weed to taste, optional
• Crushed Red Pepper Flakes to taste, optional

Directions:

• In a bowl, combine the hash browns, butter, salt and pepper.
• Fill Demarle muffin cup molds ½ full, tamp down.
• Bake at 400°F for 12 minutes or until lightly browned.
• Meanwhile, cut sausage into ½-inch pieces, and cook according to package directions.
• Divide sausage among muffin cups.
• Beat eggs and spices, stir in cheese. Spoon over sausage.
• Bake for 13 to 15 minutes or until set.

*If I am doing the 6 batches, I will cook the sausage the day before. That part takes about an hour. Total preparation and baking time for 6 batches is about 3.5 hours (Plus I was able to prepare this blog post including pictures during baking time!). So worth it to only have to do every 6 weeks!!*

 

                                       

Brussels Sprouts

Valentine's Day is NOW OVER.   I am renewing my purpose to "make adjustments" in the winter holiday and subsequent sugar cravin' weight "changes".

Recently one of my sisters made a commitment to add one veggie serving per day to her diet.  I decided to join her in that.  It has been somewhat successful.  For a couple weeks I did it but after those first couple weeks the reality is I managed to add one serving per WEEK.  Do I hear cheering?  Aw, come on, be a sport.

When I was a a kid. . .okay, even as an adult, I avoided Brussels sprouts.  Potatoes were the veggie of choice.  Then when it came into my awareness to roast veggies I learned to like these miniature cabbages. It came as a pleasant surprise the first time a friend had us for lunch and in her unglazed clay baking dish she roasted them with olive oil and sea salt.  That was a few years ago.

Last month when the idea was fresh in my mind to add a veggie serving per day, a good friend loaned me her "Williams Sonoma Cooking At Home" tome.  This is one of those really big cookbooks without photos.  It takes more concentration to use a cookbook like that but this one seems to be worth the effort.  Based on my New Year's resolution the first recipe I tried was Brussels sprouts.  It was so good I tried it again soon and even took this photo:

The rich green chartreuse color was an unexpected and welcome result.  All Brussels sprouts in my previous experience, once cooked, were drab olive green.  This one was without the bitter taste associated with this food.

And now (drum roll please) the recipe:

Brussels Sprouts with Mustard and Lemon

1 1/2 lb Brussels sprouts
3 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 Tablespoon whole-grain mustard (I used Basel Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon Grain Mustard)
3 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and ground pepper

Trim the ends from the Brussels sprouts and cut the sprouts in half lengthwise.  Bring a large saucepan three-fourths full of salted water to  a boil.  Add the sprouts and boil until tender-crisp, 2-3 minutes.  Drain the sprouts well and let cool to room temperature.

In a bowl, stir together the lemon juice and mustard until well blended.  Set aside.

Just before serving, heat the oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat.  Add the Brussels sprouts and stir and toss until their edges just begin to turn golden, 1 -2 minutes.  At the last moment, add the lemon juice-mustard mixture and stir briskly.  Season with salt and pepper.

Transfer to a warmed bowl and serve right away.

Prairie Gold Whole Wheat Bread

 

Why this noisy video?  My mother has been experimenting with Wheat Montana Prairie Gold Whole Wheat and needed to see what the dough looked like when it has the right amount of flour; and that, my friend, depends on the weather.

For the past few years I've been extolling the virtues of baking with Wheat Montana's Prairie Gold Whole Wheat.  Why so specific you wonder?  My dad says he no longer wants to use pancake mix only make pancakes from scratch using this wheat.  I agree.

The story goes like this:  I have had children at home for many years and the challenge of feeding them until they are satisfied is something I've needed to accomplish repeatedly.  Oh, I should mention I also have a trim husband with a fast metabolism.  This is why I needed to become a decent cook of reasonably healthy food that filled them up for more than 30 minutes.

I was raised on Wonder Bread and liked it just fine at the time.  As children, my siblings and I turned up our noses at "brown bread." on the rare occasion some well intentioned family friend offered it.

Early on in our marriage I had the idea using food in its most natural state is best.  If our creator had wanted us to have bread with white flour he would have made it that way in the first place was the thought that kept coming to me.  This of course has many possible arguments but I'm just revealing the progression of my thoughts.

Well humph!  YOU just try making whole wheat waffles, pancakes, cookies, bread, rolls etc and passing it off on YOUR young family.  It was a no go; too heavy and dense.  So to make it palatable I mixed it to varying degrees with white flour.  This went on for years with varying degrees of complaint from the children and silent endurance from the spouse.

Then one wondrous day my sister who was traveling I-90 through Montana to visit us stopped at Wheat Montana and picked up bread and pastries for our enjoyment.  Now THAT was mighty fine AND it was whole wheat.  "I have some experimenting to do," said I.

It so happened that my husband's relatives once owned the land in Montana near Three Forks where the Wheat Montana products come from.  As a teenager he had helped farm that land and knew of the severe weather conditions/stress which produce the higher protein grain Montana is known for.

Well, it is a full day's drive from here to Wheat Montana but once a year or so we travel through there to visit my sister.  Each time we stopped for a break at Wheat Montana and looked over their products.  We usually came away with bread and pastries; all wonderfully edible even by the children.  On one such trip, I noticed you could buy bags of grain.  I asked the cashier for advice about lighter baked goods vs heavier baked goods and she suggested we try the Prairie Gold for the lighter outcome. We bought a 25 pound bag of Prairie Gold grain to grind ourselves.

Sitting way up high and unused on my pantry shelf was a Magic Mill wheat grinder.  This grinder along with my Bosch mixer had been a much appreciated wedding gift from my folks.  While the Bosch Mixer was used regularly, the Magic Mill had been used once.  It was so loud when we ran the thing it had to be outside with us inside.

Now with anticipation of lighter, fluffier whole wheat products, I climbed up and got it down, unwrapped it and ground some wheat; loud noise and all.  The first thing I made was waffles with 100% whole wheat.  This was not announced to anyone.  I just waited to see what they would say.  When they ate it without complaining I tried it again and again.  It was quite awhile before they knew they were eating waffles with 100% whole wheat.  They are so funny.  They had to make goofy comments about how they knew all along.  But I know they didn't.

Also in this same time frame I discovered Demarle at Home products so sometimes instead of using the waffle iron we just use a tray in the oven:

This time it was the teddy bear mold.  I have to make a lot of extras if I want them left over for breakfast on the run.  But I digress.

About 5 months ago my parents and other siblings were traveling through Montana on the way to visit the other relatives and I put in my request for them to bring back four 25 pound bags of Prairie Gold.  I specified the 25 pound bags because even though the 50 pound bags are more economical, I can't lift them.  Now some of the other relatives are trying it out and it hasn't gone so well.  I think the problem might be the recipe but I'm not sure, so here is what is currently working for me.

Whole Wheat Rolls

1 Tablespoon yeast  mixed with

1 1/2 cups warm water

1 1/2 teaspoon sea salt

4 ¼ cups fresh ground Prairie Gold Whole Wheat from Wheat Montana

3 Tablespoons raw honey

½ cup oil

Mix yeast and warm water together.  Let sit while you place the other ingredients in the Bosch mixing bowl.  Then add the yeast/water and mix for 30 seconds.  Look at it and make sure it is not too dry or too wet (see video)  Add water or flour in tablespoon increments until it is just right.  Then knead 9 minutes on lower setting.

Let rise for an hour in a place that is not too hot like I have done a time or two. Stir down and divide into muffin sections.  Let rise until doubled.  Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.  Makes 30 deep heart rolls.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day so I'm using the deep heart tray to make today's rolls.

  
Filled the heart shapes less than half full with dough.

In the photo above they raised to a little more than double in about 40 minutes.  Maybe because the lower oven is turned on and I put them in the cozy upper oven to raise.  They would usually take longer to raise without that perfect environment.

The finished, light, fluffy heart shaped dinner rolls.  Yum!  We ate several of them right up with butter only before they were cold.

After school one of the kiddos was making her sack lunch for tomorrow and informed me we needed to go to the store and buy sandwich bread.  I wasn't in the mood for that so showed her how to make two small sandwiches from one roll.  At first she was not excited about it until I told her she could take the photos and that changed everything :)

She took the next photo.

         Happy Valentine's Day