Cauliflower Mac & Four Cheese

The New Year is here and you will not starve yourself… you’ll just make things healthier. So “Comfort Foods” will still be comfort foods and some will have to be eaten in moderation (Like this Mac & Cheese). This is NOT a diet recipe, but it is a pretty cool healthy twist to the American favorite. 

This is where I will tell you how much I HATE the word Diet. It was Bill Maher who scoffed at the Pharmaceutical Companies who threw the “…when diet and exercise don’t work” around in order to sell THEIR “for profit” fixes for our waist lines. Diet and Exercise, DO work… I just don’t like doing it all the time! There is no easy fix for healthy and HEALTHY should be your goal, not a number on a scale. 

I NEVER intended to fool my family, I thought they saw me cutting cauliflower up and taping it for the show; however I would have done anything to have captured their faces when mid third or so bite I informed them, this was “Cauliflower Mac & Four Cheese”.  It was too funny! Jaws stopped chomping, stunned faces looked down at their plate; as though somehow they had missed it. They had… which meant, half the pasta replaced with a vegatable- BRILLIANT! 

“For the Love of Parsley” and Cauliflower for that matter… two pieces of vegetation that get NO respect. Well, parsley is one of the Greenest of greens and that means there are GREAT reasons to invite him to dinner, just look:

http://www.healthdiaries.com/eatthis/6-health-benefits-of-parsley.html

The fact is, I would fix this for health or not… it was great. (and lets be honest, thats a lotta’ cheese. It’s not “skinny” just “skinni-er”;) There were many recipes on line, and as we all do I looked at many and grabbed the things I liked. Due to all the cheeses, it’s not the cheapest thing to make, but then again- it’s pasta, veggie, cheese… It’s the a meal if you wanna’ make it that.

Cauliflower Mac & Four Cheese

This makes enough for a LARGE gathering- so half if you like

1 box of shell pasta (cooked almost done)

1 head of cauliflower (chopped & cooked in pasta water till firm but tender)

[ combine the two in a large casserole dish ]

3 cups of milk (go skinny w/ the milk, you have plenty of cheese in this)

1 cp chopped Gouda

1 cp chopped pepper jack

1/2 block of cream cheese

1/2 cup of parmesan cheese

[melt all this on the stove eye]

add to the melted cheese

1/2 tsp mustard powder

1/2 tsp paprika

1cp of chopped parsley

[Pour this over the pasta & Cauliflower]

Melt Butter and garlic and mix with Panko Bread crumbs over the top

bake till Golden Brown