Sunday 27 November 2016

Cauliflower Cheese and Starting Again

Last week I went back to eating LCHF again.  For one reason and another I had fallen off the wagon, for nearly 9 months. Inevitably I had re-gained all the weight that I had lost, but that didn't bother me as much as the other symptoms.  The worst one was the reflux.  When I'm eating carbs I need to carry gaviscon tablets around with me all the time, which is no fun, let me tell you.  I also really hate the fact that my ankles are swollen almost constantly when I am eating carbs.

I've been low carb again now for just over 10 days, and have had no reflux symptoms at all for the last 9 days.  The constant hunger that I have when eating carbs/sugar has already receded, and my ankles have come back again.  I didn't weigh myself at the outset this time, as I don't have weighing scales in the house anymore, but some of my clothes are already slightly looser around the waist.

One of the things that I find the most difficult about eating low-carb is the amount of cooking involved.  I find that unless I have a ready supply of meals in the freezer and suitable snacks in the fridge that it is too tempting to eat foods that are too high in carbs.  I'm going to try from now on to make a point of always having appropriate meals available in the freezer, and one of those meals is cauliflower cheese.  I've always loved cauliflower cheese, and spent many of my weight watchers years trying to make a low-fat version.  They never worked though, and after a while I just resigned myself to only eating it when having a 'cheat day'.

All of this meant that the first recipe I wanted to tackle when embarking on a LCHF regime was cauliflower cheese.  And let me tell you, in all the times I have made it since, with slight differences to the recipe each time, there has never been a dud one.  It is now one of my favourite meals.

The last time that I made it I took time to write down the amounts of ingredients I used, and even took a few photos, so that I could keep a definitive recipe for myself. You'll notice that my recipe is in fact for cauliflower and broccoli cheese with bacon.  I can assure you that it will work just as well without the broccoli or bacon, but I think they make this recipe perfect.

Ingredients

1 head of cauliflower
1 head of broccoli (just use 2 heads of cauliflower if you prefer)
6 rashers of streaky bacon (optional)

400g cheddar (you could substitute 100g of this with blue cheese and it works wonderfully too)
150ml cream
400g full-fat cream cheese

Method

Steam or boil the vegetables until they are almost cooked, then drain all the water away.
Cook the bacon until crispy. Put the vegetables and bacon into a baking dish. Don't forget to put all the bacon fat in with it too.


Put the cream cheese, cream and almost all of the cheddar into a pan and stir together to make the best cheese sauce you have ever tasted.  It will seem like a lot of cheese sauce.  Trust me, you'll need it all.



Pour the cheese sauce over the vegetables and bacon and mix well to ensure there is sauce covering everything.

Sprinkle your reserved cheese on the top and bake in the oven at 200C for about 25 minutes.


Look at that - doesn't it look fabulous?

It serves 4-6 people, depending on how hungry you are.  If you're cooking for 1 or 2, just freeze the rest.  When needed again, cook in the microwave for 2-4 minutes for a speedy, delicious, LCHF ready meal.






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