Cauliflower Shrimp Fried Rice

I have a weakness for good food and most of the time what I crave is not healthy, but this Paleo Friendly,Gluten free, Low carb treat is the perfect fake out for that fattening Chinese Takeout. What if I told you that Cauliflower fried rice tastes almost identical to the real thing? Let me say it again. Cauliflower fried rice tastes just life real fried rice.  Low carb, delicious and full of flavor.  

Instead of regular rice, riced cauliflower is stir fried with fresh veggies and shrimp to create a masterpiece that can rival your favorite Chinese take out fried rice. Vegetables and seafood. The perfect way to eat healthy and feel like you are cheating. You can also make this completely vegan by skipping the shrimp.  All of the flavor and none of the guilt. This is so good that I ate it three days in a row. Cauliflower is such a versatile vegetable because it takes on the flavor of whatever you cook it with. 

How awesome is that!

With so many great things to make with cauliflower, I've gone a little cauliflower crazy lately. If you missed my delicious pizza made with cauliflower crust, check it out here.  

For this dish, you can use fresh head of cauliflower and rice it yourself or you can buy riced cauliflower in the frozen section of the grocery store. Trader Joe's has a great riced cauliflower in the freezer section, but it sells out pretty fast, so when you see it, grab it quick.  Are you ready to make some delicious Cauliflower Shrimp Fried Rice? Lets go!

This will take you 20 minutes or less. And you will need soy sauce, sesame oil, fresh veggies and your choice of meat. I love to use shrimp or chicken.

Use uncooked cleaned and deveined jumbo shrimp, and chop some onions

Garlic, white onion and green onion add a great depth of flavor

Saute your garlic and onions until translucent and 

then add the shrimp

Add your veggies

Add your eggs and scramble on the side of the skillet and then incorporate into the cauliflower, shrimp and veggies

And Voila! Cauliflower Shrimp Fried Rice

Ingredients

2 tablespoons sesame oil

2 minced garlic cloves

1/2 cup chopped white onion

1/2 cup chopped green onion 

8 oz of  uncooked shrimp cleaned and deveined 

1/2 cup peas and carrots

1 Bag of riced cauliflower (or 1 medium head of cauliflower if you prefer to rice it yourself)

2-3 tablespoons soy sauce

2 eggs beaton

salt and pepper 

Directions:

Heat the sesame oil in a skillet or wok. Saute the garlic and onions for a couple of minutes and then add the shrimp and cook for a minute (it will start to turn pink). Stir in the cauliflower and stir fry, add the peas and carrots to the side of the skillet, mix it into the cauliflower and continue stir frying, stir in the soy sauce and then move to the side of the skillet and scramble the eggs on the other side of the skillet. Combine the eggs into the cauliflower and shrimp.

Bon Appetit!

2 Ingredient Low Carb Pancakes

Pancakes, french toast and waffles are occasional breakfast treats I crave, but I don't crave the sugar, fat and calories. I discovered an amazing way to enjoy pancakes without guilt. This simple two ingredient recipe is bananas! Quite literally. Two eggs and a banana and you have a light tasty pancake, although it is more like a banana crepe than a pancake. 

They are slightly sweet and I enjoy them plain, but a drizzle of syrup would certainly add to their deliciousness. I like them with a side of fresh berries for a healthy low carb breakfast. My only gripe about these tasty cakes is that they are difficult to flip over, so I usually make them silver dollar size to make flipping them over a little easier. I have also found that adding a teaspoon of baking powder helps the texture a little, but it is not required.

Start with two fresh eggs

And grab one banana

I like to use a blender to quickly mix the ingredients, but you can use a hand mixer or simply mash banana with a fork and then mix egg into it with a spoon

Ingredients

2 eggs

1 ripe banana

Directions: 

Either combine ingredients in blender, or simply mash with a fork, add the eggs and mix well. Grease a skillet with butter, coconut oil or your favorite cooking spray. When skillet is hot, pour a small amount of batter into skillet (silver dollar size).

Cook until edges are golden brown and flip over and cook until other side is golden brown. Serve warm.

 Bon Appetit!

Kale Cranberry Apple Salad

This salad is full of good stuff and perfect for the Holiday season. Apples, cranberries, pecans and a melange of crispy veggies balance nicely with the robust kale. If you are looking for a great holiday salad for your Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, this is it!

Kale is a very robust salad green and can handle a lot more dressing than the typical salad. Massaging some of the dressing into the kale takes away some of the harshness that kale can have and the longer it sits with the dressing on it the better it tastes. Another great trick to make kale salad even better is to warm the vinaigrette and let it slightly cook the kale and take some of the rough edge out of it. This salad has a nice sweetness, a little tartness, crunch and lots of flavors that blend well together.

 Start with fresh kale and chop the leaves as small and thin as possible

Red Cabbage adds some flavor and texture

Carrots add more color and a little sweetness

Dried cranberries add so much flavor and more sweetness that balances well with the kale

Apple marries well with all of the other ingredients. My favorite apple to use in salads is granny smith or pink lady, but your favorite one will work perfectly

Pecans add that delicious crunchiness that we love in a good salad

This is so good, you will want to eat it all the time. Try making this for the holidays

Ingredients

1/2 cup pecans

8 ounces of kale 

1 carrot

1/2 cup chopped red cabbage

1 granny smith apple

1/2 cup dried cranberries

Dressing Ingredients

6 tablespoons oil

3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

3 tablespoons honey

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 and spread on a cookie sheet or baking pan and bake for about 5-7 minutes. Wash kale and remove the stems. Chop the kale into bite size pieces/  Sprinkle a dash of sea salt over the kale and massage by the handful by scrunching with your hands gently. Set aside.

Grate the carrot and chop the red cabbage into thin shreds. In a small bowl, whisk the salad ingredients together. Take a couple of tablespoons of dressing and massage it into the kale. Add the carrots, red cabbage, apple, and cranberries. Toss the ingredients and let sit for 20 minutes. Add the pecans and toss once before serving.

The apples are so good in this salad and you can swap the apples for pears and it works beautifully

 

This is a great way to get your fruits and veggies in one meal

What are you waiting for? 

Bon Appetit!

Cool Haus Ice Cream (LV's LA)

I love ice cream. Love it! back in the day when the familiar sound of the ice cream truck had us all tripping over our own feet to catch it, we could expect a bomb pop, a nutty buddy, a 50/50 bar, an Eskimo pie and that familiar ice cream sandwich with the chocolate cookies filled with vanilla ice cream. Those familiar traditional frozen treats are now in the company of ice cream with unfamiliar curiosity invoking flavors like chicken and waffle. Yes, it's not just for breakfast anymore.

The ice cream truck has gotten a makeover and gone gourmet. The owner of Coolhaus is an ex-architect who left the practice to start up a food truck business, and the architectural theme uses the clever play on words Cool Haus as in Cool House an ice cream sandwich with a cookie roof, floor, and ice cream walls.  This great architectural concept could also be viewed through the eyes of fashion. If there was a Versace, Valentino or Betsy Johnson of Ice Cream, Cool Haus would be it.

Bold flavors that don't seem to go together are insanely good. Kind of like: Oh my God, you wore those purple bell bottoms with yellow shoes a polka dot top and a red purse? That's actually a killer combo. You have to see that to appreciate it. With Cool Haus, you have to taste it to believe it.

After playing hide and seek with the trucks and finally catching them. It was worth the chase.

Hello Cool Haus!

Fried Chicken and Waffle Ice Cream on freshly baked snicker-doodle cookies

If you had told me I would eat chicken and waffle ice cream and like it, I would have looked at you like it was time for the men in white coats to take you away. Well, I tried it and let me tell you, I LOVED IT! I didn't just like it. I loved it! 

My taste buds didn't know what to do. They were confused and happy. Two fresh snicker doodle cookies held together by fried chicken and waffle ice cream. So how was it? The ice cream was buttery, sweet and had a rich maple finish and a hint of crunchy saltiness. Delicious! or as the kids would say, "SICK!" In addition to the amazing ice cream sandwich itself, the experience was enhanced by the edible wrapper each ice cream sandwich is served in. Jaw-dropping flavors, great service and environmentally responsible. This is my kind of company.

If you don't like ice cream, the folks at Cool Haus will make a believer out of you. During my Cool Haus ice cream truck experience, there were so many intriguing flavor combos that the phrase "you show me yours and I'll show you mine" had strangers chatting like long lost friends. And then I had to find a place so that me and my Cool Haus ice cream sandwich could be alone. 

Just me and my sammie.

Ice cream just shouldn't make a woman feel like that and I was giving this sammie some serious public displays of affection. 

And it was so good that I had to have that feeling again, so I showed up at their storefront in Culver City. The service was excellent and they let me sample every flavor in the freezer. I loved every single one! And then I settled on brown butter candied bacon ice cream with a Potato Chip Butterscotch cookie. 

I told you they were insane, but in the best way. The cookie was soft and moist with the perfect hint of sweet and salty which was a great compliment for the brown butter candied bacon ice cream. After I devoured my ice cream sandwich, they gave me a complimentary molten chocolate cake ice cream to make my sinful experience complete. All I have to say is: ooh ooh ooh...

Potato Chip Butterscotch cookie with candied bacon 
ice cream. YUM!

Its unbelievable. Seriously.

Are you curious yet?

When they said Molten chocolate cake ice cream, they weren't playing. So rich and chocolatey!

Red Velvet Cookies for your Ice Cream sandwich. 

They have an amazing selection of rotating flavors to choose from. You start by picking your cookie.

The flavors vary each day, but every last one I tasted was very good.

Cool Haus has over 50 tongue twisting flavors. Some of the unique flavor combinations are: Chicken and Waffle, Brown Butter Bacon, Rosemary, Mascarpone Fig, Thai Iced Tea, sweet potato and marshmallow, red velvet, spicy pineapple and cilantro,  and so many other flavors to tease your tasebuds. They also have vegan and gluten free options such as: vegan chocolate truffle banana cookies and coconut almond. An ice cream sandwich at Cool Haus is five bucks, but for the quality of ice cream, it is worth the money.

I love Cool Haus, but If I don't exercise some restraint this love affair with Cool Haus could put me in a sweet sugar coma:-)

Cool Haus

8388 Washington Blvd

Culver City, CA 90230

310-424-5559

Cool Haus Truck

Follow on Twitter or check website to see if the truck is in your area: http://www.eatcoolhaus.com/