Is that rice?

February 20, 2013

I enjoy cooking for my family. I like making fun snacks for them. I feel like I am being a good mom if I make them good food....just not before 11 a.m. Ha. I am not a morning person. I don't like making breakfast and therefore am not really good at it. This morning my daughter brought me the box of pancake mix and looked at me with a big smile. I stared blankly at her. She pushed the box a little closer to me. I grabbed my coffee cup. She pushed it a little further and gave me puppy dog eyes. Uh oh. Daughter 1- Mom 0. I gave in.

I made a few regular pancakes and then noticed that I had some over ripe bananas. I've heard of banana pancakes before. Let's give it a shot. I just chopped the banana into small pieces and stirred it into the pancake batter. Oh wow. I can't believe we have been missing out on something so delicious. Pancakes may always have banana in them from now on. I'll just have to tell my hubby so he'll know when he makes breakfast. Ha.

I pulled out a leftover buffet for lunch. My daughter had lasagna. I had who hash (ok, a sautee of pulled pork and sweet potatoes). My son had chicken (leftover from when I made homemade broth out of the carcasses) and the rest of the pancakes.

Ok, so here is where I thought my day was going to take a turn for the worse. I really thought that this would be the meal that my kids thought I had lost my mind. I saw that I had a small amount of pulled pork left. There was also a small amount of chicken. Really, they were too small to do anything with. Unless I mixed them together. Hmmmm. I read about something cool today. Put cauliflower in a food processor to make cauliflower "rice". Oh yeah, I'm all over that. I sauteed some onion, garlic, and ginger in a little olive oil. Then I added the cauliflower "rice". After a few minutes, I added teriyaki sauce and the chicken and pork. I felt like we needed something else to go with the meal. I looked in the freezer and I actually had a bag of asian vegetable mix. Steamed them up and put them on the bed of "rice"/meat.

The test. I called the kids in for dinner. They asked what we were having and I said stir fry. After a few bites, my daughter asked "what's in the rice stuff?" Wohoo! She called it rice! I said "teriyaki sauce, onion, garlic, ginger, pulled pork, and chicken". It was so hard to hold a straight face. I wanted to scream "it's cauliflower!!". They ate and then I asked what they thought. They both liked it but my son prefers bigger pieces of meat in stir fry. Ok, I can handle that. Really? Do they not realize that it is cauliflower?? I told them to look at the rice and see what they thought it was. My daughter said quinoa. Ha. I can't believe this worked. Yes, it had a little different texture than rice. However, it is definitely a fun substitute. Kids 1- Mom 1. Ahhhh, the challenge lives another day...