A Failed Experiment

Today I looked at my menu and didn't see anything that tickled my fancy so I decided to peruse Pinterest to find something that did. Prominently featured among the health conscious recipes, was 'cauliflower Alfredo' which is touted as being undetectable, as good as the real thing. Creamy and white it sure looked like Alfredo. Just cook the cauliflower, season it, blend it with non-dairy milk and voila- healthy Alfredo sauce. I had half a head of cauliflower and all of the ingredients, so I went for it. I also made some pasta, topped with some sautéed vegetables (And garlic. Lots of garlic) and the 'Alfredo' sauce. I had high hopes. But alas...they were dashed. I will spare you the Alfredo recipe because it basically sucked. And once I added it to the sautéed vegetables it turned an unappetizing beige color. It wasn't awful. It just didn't taste or look like Alfredo sauce. It tasted and smelled strong... like cauliflower blended with 'not real' milk. :P So that's that.  Beware of recipes that claim to be 'exactly like'______. More than likely they aren't. I'm also leery of zucchini noodles and spaghetti squash. I struggle already with whole wheat noodles. I know they're healthier but lets be honest. White tastes better. At least to me. I have a similar struggle with brown rice. Maybe one day I'll feel differently. But tonight I am a dissatisfied customer. Oh well. Tomorrow's another day. Better stick to the menu!

On another note: This morning while I was making oatmeal I was craving butter. I love me some creamy butter in a hot bowl of oatmeal. Earlier, when we were shopping for the fast, I felt that I needed to find a butter substitute for the fast that would fall within the D-fast guidelines. My search down the dairy aisle yielded a couple of dairy-free choices. They had healthy sounding names, said no GMOs and had things like olive oil in them. I guess I was blinded by my butter love and skipped over the ingredients. So what'd it taste like? You know that fake plastic-tasting butter flavor seasoning that you can sprinkle on popcorn and such? Yea thats what it tasted like. Kinda like the difference between a real banana and banana flavored candy. Ewww. I guess when you've partaken of the real long enough, you can easily spot the fake (there's a spiritual lessen in there somewhere). True it was dairy free and therefore 'Daniel Fast friendly' but I think if I was craving butter during this fast it'd be a better choice for my 'temple' to cheat and eat real, non-processed, dairy butter rather than fake butter-flavored chemicals. For the record, the fake butter ended up in the trash and I'm just going to stay off butter, real or imagined the rest of this fast.

Fake butter ingredients. Is any of this actually food?

After the fake butter fiasco, I started checking the ingredients of questionable food items (you'd think I'd done this already. Rookie mistake. Or a state of denial) And lest you think this post is all bad news, I made a happy discovery.

This...  Simply Apple, apple juice. All apple juice. Nothing else. This is a good sweetener for smoothies and whatever else you need sweetened. And it doesn't suck. Tastes great. Yay! So tomorrow I'll be making sure to check ingredients and I'll be trying again. :)