Like pancakes and whipped cream, I never knew I would miss mashed potatoes until I went Paleo. They were always just sort of eh for me--I'd eat them if they were in front of me, but I really never went out of my way to make them myself.

The other day I bought a head of cauliflower with no real idea of what to do with it, so I decided to cook it quickly and blend it up in an attempt to serve a mashed potato-like dish at a dinner party Rob and I were hosting. I threw some truffle oil in and finished it off with Parmesan, and the result was simultaneously sophisticated and totally comforting. A perfect winter dish!

Paleo Mashed Cauliflower with Parmesan & Truffle Oil

Ingredients: 

• One head of cauliflower, washed and chopped
• Six to eight cups of water for cooking
• One clove of garlic
• 1/2-1 teaspoon truffle oil
• Two tablespoons of grass-fed butter
• A splash of full-fat coconut or almond milk (optional)
• Several tablespoons of Parmesan cheese (also optional)
• Salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions: 

1. In a large pot, bring water to a boil. Add the cauliflower and cook for about ten minutes, or until the florets are fork-tender.
2. Remove from heat, drain water and set cauliflower aside for the moment. (If you're using a blender, you can blend the cauliflower now. Otherwise it's going back in the pot to be mashed with an immersion blender or a simple wooden spoon.)
3. Over medium heat, saute the garlic in a bit of the butter. Turn off heat and return the cauliflower to pot. Add the rest of the butter.
4. With an immersion blender, blend the cauliflower until it is at your desired lumpiness/creaminess. If it's too thick, feel free to add a splash of coconut or almond milk (or more butter, I won't judge you).
5. Season with salt, pepper, and truffle oil--do the truffle oil a bit at a time as it can easily become overpowering.
6. Transfer mashed cauliflower to an oven-safe dish, top with Parmesan, and place in the oven on broil to brown the cheese (it only takes a few minutes--stay there and watch it to ensure it doesn't burn). Serve and enjoy!

This is a recipe that I originally posted in January of 2012 and it's since become my most popular, both in my life and here on the blog. I wanted to update it with new photos and edit the instructions a bit, since I've made them quite a few times over the past three years and have learned a thing or two while doing it. I decided to leave the original post introduction below (written when we lived in Charlottesville, Virginia, in our first real apartment together) because I'm nostalgic like that.

There is laundry all over my living room floor. It's clean, but it's taking up space because as I write this, it's still a little damp. The dryers in our apartment complex just don't do their job, and every time we end up with damp laundry. For just one more dollar, we could have dry laundry, but I don't want to encourage bad behavior. And sometimes, I'm out of quarters.

But it's okay, because there are things like bacon and avocados in my refrigerator. And that's really all you need.

Make these when things are acting a lot more complicated than they need to be.

Ingredients:

• One avocado
• Six to eight slices of bacon 
• Salt and pepper
• One or two wedges of fresh lime
• A sprinkle of cayenne powder

1. Slice and peel your avocado. You should get 6 to 8 wedges from each.
2. Wrap a slice of bacon around each wedge! Feel free to use a toothpick to hold them together and retain your sanity. (If you're short on time, you can use pre-cooked bacon: assemble them as usual and simply warm them up in a pan or in the oven for a few minutes before serving.)
3. Cook in a hot pan until they're nice and crispy. You'll have to turn them a couple times to get it cooked on all sides.
4. Finish them off with a tiny sprinkle of salt, pepper, lime juice, and cayenne. Serve warm.

Eat these for lunch. Make them again for an appetizer before dinner. Fold your laundry.

PS Because this is an old post re-published, some of my replies to the original comments are in weird places. If you leave a comment from now on, I'll respond to it right there in the thread. 

My brother and I always used to make fried rice together. It was one of my favorite dishes, and it was always a team effort--we'd get the pan super hot and keep adding tablespoon after tablespoon of butter, spreading the rice out in one thin layer and pressing down with a spatula so it got super crispy. 

Sean and I haven't made fried rice in a long time, especially since I've gone grain-free, although to be honest white rice isn't something I lose sleep over if I eat it here and there, because what exactly is a life without sushi? But that's beside the point--I was grocery shopping last week and picked up a couple daikon radishes, which I almost never eat. Then I picked up some green peas, which I never really buy, and I realized it was time to make fried rice again, only this time, a Paleo version.

This recipe involves using a spiral slicer to make noodles out of the daikon radish before chopping them up, but if you don't have a spiralizer, you could use a food processor (for both steps) instead.

Ingredients (serves one for lunch or maybe two as a side dish):

• 1 1/2 cups "riced" daikon
• 1 1/2 tablespoons sesame oil
• 1/4 cup carrots, diced
• 1/4 cup green peas
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/4 teaspoon fresh ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 2 tablespoons coconut aminos (but I won't tell anyone if you use gluten-free soy sauce)
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon grass-fed butter

Instructions:

1. Peel your daikon radish and use spiral slicer to create noodles. Then chop liberally until you have daikon rice!
2. In a large pan, saute the daikon rice in the sesame oil. Spread the daikon rice out into one layer and let it cook for a minute or two, then mix it up and repeat several times for five to seven minutes.
3. Add butter, garlic, and ginger. Stir until well incorporated. Add the carrots, peas, crushed red pepper, and coconut aminos. Continue to stir.
4. Crack an egg over the pan and scramble it right there in the pan, incorporating it into the fried rice.
5. Continue to cook until daikon rice starts getting crispy (feel free to add another half tablespoon or so of butter if you wish). Season with pepper and maybe some salt, just taste it first because the coconut aminos is pretty salty.
6. Enjoy hot, straight out of the pan, and don't forget to tell your brother all about it.