As I’ve mentioned before, I am not a food blogger. But this time I can’t keep my opinions to myself.

In our quest for the ideal, healthy diet, there’s a lot of experimenting going on in our kitchen. Of particular concern is this idea of cutting back on grains and other carbohydrate-dense foods.

Sadly, the main non-grain carb to be shunned is the always-delicious white potato. The kind that is so wonderful baked or mashed, with plenty of butter and sour cream.

I’m sure you’ve heard of substituting mashed cooked cauliflower for mashed potatoes. You can, in fact, cook cauliflower florets until tender and mash them with butter and milk. The resulting gloop is similar in color to mashed potatoes.

The resemblance ends there.

Cauliflower is a fibrous, high-water-content vegetable that smells like cabbage.

Mashed cauliflower is a fibrous, watery gloop that smells like cabbage.

In other words, when mashed, cauliflower does not magically transform into potatoes’ identical twin. Even with pepper and a pat of butter on top.

Another cauliflower idea was to make grain-free pizza crust out of it. Ohh-kay… I found a recipe online and made a small trial crust, adding eggs, spices, and two kinds of cheese to the main ingredient. You bake the crust first on parchment paper, then top as usual and bake the whole pizza.

Result? A functional-but-soft crust that smelled like cabbage. It didn’t resemble bread so much as it did a frittata.

As near as I can figure, the key to these substitutions is to adjust your expectations. As it happens, I like cauliflower, so the mashed stuff doesn’t have to be potato-y for me to like it. I’d probably skip the gravy, though. As for the pizza, I also like frittatas, even if they smell like cabbage, so a thin frittata topped with sauce, mozzarella, and pepperoni suits me just fine.

It just doesn’t fool me.

On a completely unrelated note….. does anyone know how to get rid of the smell of cabbage in the kitchen?

Bon appétit!

Thanks for reading,
Jan