Cauliflower Rice Jambalaya

Recently, I've started a dietary lifestyle called the 2B Mindset.  Essentially, it's eat lots veggies all the time. (Wanna know more? Ask one of those people on your Facebook timeline always posting about their Beachbody workouts and their Shakeology.)

Anyway, one of the foods I've discovered during this venture is cauliflower rice. I HATE CAULIFLOWER. HATE IT. But it turns out when you rice it and cook it into something, it takes on the flavors of whatever you're adding. So far, I've tried and had success with stir fry, tacos, and jambalaya. And here's the blasphemous reason for this post: I actually liked the jambalaya better with the cauliflower rice instead of real rice!

Jambalaya is more a technique than a recipe, so when I made it, I just threw ingredients in the pan. For the sake of this post, I'm going to try to explain what it is and walk you through the process.

The ingredients you definitely need to be able to call your dish jambalaya without having to hide your face in shame are the holy trinity (onion, celery, and green bell pepper), sausage (andouille traditionally, but regular smoked is fine if you don't want it too spicy), a decent creole seasoning, and rice. From there, it's a matter of how easy or elaborate you want to go. This post will be the 2B-friendly version.

Sausage has a lot of sodium and fat. But you really want the flavor, so don't skip it. Do cut a small amount in small pieces so it spreads throughout the dish. Lightly brown sausage in a frying pan, then remove meat from skillet. Leaving fat from sausage (drain some if there is a lot and add a little olive oil if necessary), add cut up chicken breast to pan and saute until just barely cooked and remove that from pan. I happened to have leftover grilled chicken and grilled smoked sausage in the refridge, so I got to skip this step.

Add holy trinity to pan (plus a touch of olive oil if necessary). I actually used red bell pepper and jalapeno instead of green bell pepper because that's what I had. I also threw in some garlic, because yum. Saute for a few minutes, until onions start to soften, then add cauliflower rice. Once everything is mixed together, add some creole seasoning. Tony Cacheres and Zatarains are two brands, but at the bottom of the post, I will share my own AMAZING recipe that I always have mixed up and ready to use.

Cook for a couple minutes, then add your meat back it. Keep cooking and stirring until the meat is warmed through and the cauliflower is a nice texture.  Add water (and a little more seasoning to compensate) if it seems dry. Since my meat was already cooked, this whole thing probably took like 15 minutes to make, including the time I spent chopping veggies.

I use fresh cauliflower rice (I buy it bagged in the produce section at Walmart). If you are using frozen, I'm sure adjustments should be made, but I don't know them as I haven't used frozen myself.

Really, any protein is amazing in this. Use what you like, just make sure to keep the ratio 25% protein and 75% veggie. Or up the protein, but have a salad on the side.

Here's a general sauteing hint: When you are attempting to soften veggies but don't want to get color on them or don't want to add extra fat to the pan, add a couple tablespoons of water to them. They'll continue to cook, won't brown, and the water will evaporate.

Creole Seasoning
3T paprika
2T onion powder
2T garlic powder
2T dried oregano
2T dried basil
1T dried thyme
1T black pepper
1T white pepper
1T cayenne pepper
1T kosher salt
1/4t chile powder
1/4t ground cumin

This Bacon Will Get You Laid

We celebrated my husband's 40th birthday over the weekend. It was a whiskey and bourbon tasting party and I made THE BEST food to go with it. The best of the best was this bacon.

To prepare it, I cut a pound of applewood smoked bacon into bits, placed it in a cold non-stick pan, turned up the heat to medium, and sauteed until it was just barely shy of totally done. (This is how I always cook bacon if I don't need full strips.)

Then I placed the bits on a baking sheet that I'd covered in foil and brushed the reduced glaze all over. Then I sprinkled brown sugar all over and baked for maybe 10 minutes or so until it looked completely done.

I used maybe half the glaze and like a tablespoon of sprinkling sugar. I used the rest of the glaze in another dish. I'll tell you about that another time.

I used the candied bacon bits to top deviled eggs, and put the rest out in a bowl on their own. (We still have some left and I can't wait to use them in a salad!)

I love deviled eggs. And the saltysmokeysweet bacon bits on top put them over the edge. Also, instead of paprika, I dust my eggs with a tiny bit of cayenne. Really wakes them up. If I had fresh dill, I think a bit of that as garnish would have made these pretty much perfect.

In conclusion, MAKE THIS BACON! You'll probably score. Yes, it's THAT good.

Update: Project Hair

I recently mentioned on Facebook that I was going to try this homemade hair regrowth serum. I'm using Jamaican black castor oil and sunflower oil, with coffee, rosemary, and peppermint essential oils, twice a week. It's too early to tell if these scalp treatments are doing anything to stimulate new growth where my hair has gotten so thin you may as well say I have bald spots. However, my existing hair has gotten quite soft and shiny, and I have zero split ends. Also, I think I'm losing less in the shower and I'm definitely cleaning less out of my brushes.

These treatments are a bit of a process. I've been doing it on Monday and Friday mornings for 3-4 hours, and my hair can still be kind of oily those days after washing it out. I can't imagine what a pain it would be if you had long and/or thick hair. (Though I guess if I used a less gentle shampoo, that would help.) And the combination of the ashy smell of the JBCO and the coffee EO makes me smell like a gas station convenience store, which is both kind of gross and kind of oddly appealing.

But!

I've also been applying some straight JBCO with a q-tip to my eyebrows and eyelashes almost every night and there has definitely been some regrowth there. I haven't been able to grow eyebrow hairs in my actually eyebrow line in a couple years, so this is huge for me. And my eyelashes, which tend to fall out frequently and sometimes in clumps leaving bare spots, have not been falling out and the bare spots have filled in.  BIG DIFFERENCE here.

In addition to around my eyes at night, I've been using the same JBCO-soaked q-tip around my hair line. It may be my imagination, but I think there are some teeny tiny baby hairs sprouting. I'll reserve judgment on that. Check out the link above for some before and after pictures (of someone who is not me).

Overall, so far, I think the Jamaican black castor oil is definitely useful in and of itself. The other ingredients for the scalp treatment, I'm not yet convinced. But it's early, and the life cycle of hair on the head is much longer than that around the eyes, so we shall see.

Watch this space.

Best Easy Banana Muffins

I have made these muffins many, many times now and can tell you that they are, for sure, the easiest and best little muffins you could ever make. And so they are also perfect to star as the first post on my sure-to-see-little-action blog, which was created for the sole purpose of having someplace to put things that I want to pin or have pinned. Really, it has nothing to do with you except for the fact that I think you'll really want this recipe because it's a super easy and delicious way to deal with those overripe bananas stinking up your kitchen that your kids made you buy even though you knew they weren't going to eat them.

Um, I don't know how to do those handy little recipe box things yet. So whatever. But I have figured this to the minimum number of tools needed, because I hate doing dishes.


Banana Muffins

Tools
1 large bowl
1/2 cup dry measure
1 cup liquid measure
1 teaspoon measure
potato masher
rubber spatula
muffin tin
small trigger scoop
paper liners
cooling rack

Ingredients
3 large ripe bananas
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup avocado oil (or melted butter or other flavorless oil)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon orange extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 cup chocolate chips

Directions
Preheat over to 350 degrees.

Line mini muffin pan with paper liners.

In a large bowl, mash bananas with potato masher until good and mashed. (If you are using small bananas, this comes to about 1 1/2 cups of mashed banana.)

Still with the masher, mix in sugar, egg, oil, and extracts, pausing between each to make sure it is incorporated before adding the next.

Sprinkle flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt over liquid mixture. With a rubber spatula, mix the dry ingredients together a bit and then gently fold into wet ingredients, until not quite completely combined. (To avoid tough muffins, don't do this vigorously.)

Add chocolate chips and stir until evenly distributed. Again, do not over-stir.

With trigger scoop, put one scoop into each lined muffin cup. Bake at 350 degrees in center of over for 10-15 minutes (my oven reliably takes 14 minutes, but I don't have a thermometer in there to confirm that it runs true), until slightly browned on top. Remove from over and leave in tin for about two minutes before turning out onto cooling rack.

This recipe makes 48 mini muffins.

Notes
I think the mini muffins cook up best with this recipe, but you could do full size muffins as well. It makes 12-16 and bakes for I think like 22 minutes.

It also cooks up decently in an 8x8 cake pan for about 40 minutes. You'll want to spray that with Pam or line it with parchment.

But truly, the mini muffins are the best.

Avocado oil is my preferred light oil for everything, but you could use vegetable, canola, or any other light oil you like. Melted butter works too. Melted coconut oil would also work, but note that it would add a different flavor.

Orange extract is not necessary, but it really is the thing that take them to the next level of yummy goodness.