Bucket List Challenge

For my 40th birthday a few weeks ago, my friends gave me suggestions for things to add to my bucket list. There are lots of things from the less challenging of going to a brush bar and painting a picture to things needing more planning such as ride an elephant in Thailand or swim with the dolphins (I don't know how to swim). Others are going to be a year long process- cook a new recipe a week for a year or take a picture a day for a year.  And then there are going to be some that I know will change my life- going on a mission trip is on the list. And not to be selfish, I want my trip to be something related to agriculture or orphanages. I want to get down in the dirt with people.

I'm looking forward to experiencing each one and sharing the process along the way. I'm going to have fun even if I'm scared (zip lining in the Catalina Islands). I am going to try and blog each Friday about my bucket list challenge. I'll share what I did and if I would say it's a success or not.

 

Today I started my first challenge which was to cook a new recipe each week. I decided to try garlic mashed cauliflower. Every one talks about how it can be just like mashed potatoes. It was easy to make but it wasn't the same as real mashed potatoes . I thought of my friend Sarah and how she gave me a great recipe for using cauliflower to make pizza crust. They live over an hour from town so Joe made the comment that "in the land of no pizza, cauliflower pizza is king." The same could be for the mashed potatoes if they are one of your comfort foods.

I used the recipe from allrecipes.com and I realized that I don't always have the proper utensil but that an ice cream scooper can crush a garlic clove just fine but they are a little slippery and I used almost and entire garlic thingy (very technical) just getting two cloves smashed. And I burnt the first one so I had to start over. I used Queen Creek Olive Mill Olive Oil.

I have a small food processor and so I had to do process the cauliflower in small batches but it seemed to work just fine. After mixing all the ingredients in it didn't seem like it mixed well so I heated it the microwave and it seemed to mix up just fine.  And there was enough to have it with dinner for a few meals this week.

It will be a recipe that I make in the future and next week I'm going to attempt butternut squash soup. Eventually I'll try something hard like scones or something.