I generally don’t care what I eat, as long as I understand how to eat it (see ‘For Pho Sake!’), so when my wife asks me what I want for dinner, I normally reply, “I don’t mind, whatever you want”. There is the odd occasion I have specified a preference, only for her to return from the shop with something else as it would be ‘better for us’, so I generally leave the food choices to her.
The other day, it was unusual for me to say “no” to something. We were having chicken kebabs and my wife had asked me in the store whether we should get the “mango or satay ones?”, I replied “get one pack of each”, she got only the Mango ones.
I asked if we had rice at home or did we need to buy some more but was told we had some left in the pantry.
Back at home we are in the kitchen and quite naturally, as if it was the most normal suggestion in the world, my wife said “shall we have cauliflower rice instead?”, and my obvious response to this was “No”. I didn’t really know what that meant but she only needed to say the word cauliflower for me to know I didn’t want it with my kebabs.
For those who don’t know what this is, it’s essentially lightly blanched cauliflower whizzed up into small rice-sized bits.
“Come on, let’s try it” she said. “No, thanks” I replied.
“Well, we need to use the cauliflower as it’s going off. This will be a good way to use it up.” she states.
Oh, of course, you didn’t mention it was going off! Absolutely, I’ll try some cauliflower rice then. Sorry, I thought it was the fresh stuff. I didn’t realise it had been sitting in our fridge for over a week all wilted and questionable. Get me some of that cauliflower rice right now. Get in my belly!
I didn’t actually say all that, I think I went with “urgh”, and so we were having cauliflower rice with our mango chicken skewers.
A couple of hours later, dinner was ready. I was working on the computer and she calls “Dinner’s ready. Don’t let it get cold as the cauliflower rice won’t taste good if it needs to be re-heated.” Yet another fabulous feature, must be eaten within 5 minutes or it is no longer edible.
I get up and join my lovely, beautiful wife for dinner. Now, we are quite big eaters, portion control are not words we live by. I was faced by the Mount Everest of cauliflower rice. As mentioned above, it was going bad, so naturally it all had to be cooked. Also, it doesn’t reheat well so all had to be shared between our two plates tonight. My plate getting the lion’s share, lucky me! If this was the good ‘normal’ rice it would have still been too much for me to eat.
So, I start the assent up the north face of my dinner, bravely I get passed halfway, where most people before me would have stopped and turned around. To be honest, it did look like rice, it had the texture of rice but on taste, well, it tasted like cauliflower. No surprises there then, just as I had expected, which is why I had said no in the first place.
Still, I guess I can tick that off my bucket list. All I need to do now is have some broccoli bread and some carrot hotdogs and then that’s me done. I can die a happy man.
LOVE THIS! I made zucchini “pasta” once for my husband. He was about as thrilled as you were about the cauliflower rice. I would not even suggest that to him, he might run off!
Hmmmm zucchini pasta, that’s one I hadn’t heard of before and happy not to try it.
I was actually pleasantly surprised with the taste of cauliflower rice. I’m not a fan of cauliflower either but don’t min a small amount of it made into rice. I enjoyed your ascent of the Everest of rice and chuckled along! Not too sure about broccoli bread though!
Thank you for your comment, I’m glad you enjoyed it.
I have the frozen stuff in the freezer. For months now. I reckon I have bypassed it for actual real rice over thirty times now.. maybe more. No exaggeration. Can’t get past the audacity of it.
Thirty times, that’s impressive. Stay strong and stick to the ‘good’ rice.
Cauliflower cheese …yes….especially the one you made cauliflower rice (basically cauliflower) I like rice.
Can’t wait for your next story