Your Kitchen Overlord is currently confined to a Level 5 Biohazard zone. She insists she’s merely infected with a particularly violent flu, but we also saw her reading Greg Bear’s Blood Music just last week. We can’t take any risks. While she’s in isolation, the minions will be running the blog. Today’s Paleo minion is a former Rollergirl and cookbook author. We half want to unleash the zombie apocalypse just so we can arm her with a cricket bat and watch her bash in heads as she skates her way through undead hordes.
Guest Post by Melissa Joulwan
Melissa Joulwan is the author of the cookbook Well Fed: Paleo Recipes For People Who Love To Eat, Living Paleo for Dummies, and the blog The Clothes Make The Girl, where she writes every day about her triumphs and failures in the gym, in the kitchen, in life. Her second cookbook Well Fed 2: More Paleo Recipes For People Who Love To Eat will be released on October 22, 2013. She’s also a former Texas Rollergirl (Hotrod Honeys forever!) and lives in the 78704 with her husband Dave and ridiculously cute cat Smudge.
I like rules, and I love following recipes – mostly because I feel virtuous when I obey them and because occasionally breaking out of them is delicious fun. Which partially explains why I enjoy following the paleo diet. Paleo eating – sometimes called the primal or caveman diet – is based on the idea that we feel our best when we mimic the nutrition of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. I know! It sounds a little groovy or like something from science fiction. But what it boils down to for everyday meals is this: avoid grains – especially the ones that contain gluten – dairy, legumes, and excess sugar. These foods, while often tasty, can make most people feel less than their best. That’s a lot of favorite comfort foods on the “no” list, right? That’s why it’s important to focus on the “yes” list instead. Think of every kind of meat, seafood, vegetable, and fruit you can. Go on! Imagine your list… keep going. Now imagine yummy fat sources like coconuts and avocados and olives. That’s a lot of wonderful food! And those are the foods that make up the paleo diet. I’ve been eating this way for five years. I don’t think I would have been able to stick with it if I hadn’t learned how to cook food that’s every bit as delicious as “regular” food. And sometimes, you can even make super healthy food a little fun and kooky. Three hundred sixty four days of the year, cauliflower is a gentle vegetable. So humble, so bland and unassuming, so eager to please. What other vegetable allows you to grate it to smithereens to make rice or mash it into submission or purée it until it’s creamy comfort in a bowl?
But one day a year, on October 31, when witches fly across the sky and demons crawl from the depths of the netherworld and zombies meander in search of sustenance, cauliflower becomes…
Candy, schmandy! The really good stuff is brain food like power-packed protein and vegetables cooked with luscious fat. And since eating cauliflower makes you super smart, you won’t have to worry about someone trying to smash in your head with a baseball bat.
Cauliflower Brains – 100% Zombie Approved
Prep 5 min | Cook 60-75 min | Serves 2-4 undead
Ingredients:
1 head raw cauliflower
1-2 tablespoons coconut oil, melted
1/2 teaspoon salt
garnish: extra-virgin olive oil, coarse salt, lemon juice, chopped parsley or chives
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 400F. Cover a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Wash and carefully core the cauliflower, leaving the head intact.
2. Brush the head with the melted coconut oil, completely covering all exposed surfaces, then sprinkle with the salt.
3. Bake until tender and golden brown, about 60 to 75 minutes.
4. To serve: Break the head into florets, then drizzle with olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice, then sprinkle with a little coarse salt and the chopped parsley.
More Halloween Fun
Whole9 Reminds Us: Halloween Candy Is Not Special
Wil Wheaton Shares a Kickass Short Story: The Monster In My Closet
And just in case you fear a zombie infestation: The Zombie Attack Preparedness (ZAP) Workout
Plus: Shaun of the Dead
If you covet even more of her brains, you can obsessively follow Minion Melissa here:
Blog: http://www.theclothesmakethegirl.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/melicious11
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/TheClothesMakeTheGirl
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/melissajoulwan
Instagram: @melicious11
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Melissa-Joulwan/e/B001JSE2EC