Fake-a-what?

Okay, the name of this recipe was a little cheesy (pun intended). When you're eating low-carb, it seems like everyone makes the missing starch out of cauliflower. Need potatoes au gratin? Use sliced cauliflower. What if I need rice? Just put cauliflower in your food processor. And mashed potatoes? You guessed it. Pureed cauliflower. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.

Tonight it worked. Pictured above is Fake-a-Roni and Cheese from the Extreme Lo-Carb Cuisine cookbook by Sharron Long. (I picked it up at this wonderful little local bookstore called BookWorms.) It's supposed to be a substitute for that southern favorite, homemade macaroni and cheese. And the recipe called for cauliflower. Now I wouldn't say it would fool anyone, but if you think of it as its own dish, like a cauliflower au gratin, it was very good. Cheddar, sour cream, cauliflower and hot dogs (Hebrew National, of course) work well together.

For dessert I made these little creme puffs from SugarFreeSheila.com. She calls them "Bottom-of-the-Ice-Cream-Cone Creme Puffs. Now nothing can compare to a true, authentic creme puff. BUUUT, if you can't have one, these are okay. Her recipe said to put the batter on a cookie sheet and that didn't work for me. (It was reeeeally runny.) But I put it into a mini-muffin pan and that worked well. Also she says 450 degrees for 40 minutes. Yeah, no. I took mine out around 18 or 20 minutes I think. They weren't the best, but they were a decent vehicle for the creme. The creme was super-delish.

All together, a very good meal.