Cauliflower Spinach Mac and Cheese

With extra protein from cottage cheese and extra creaminess from Laughing Cow triangles, this cauliflower spinach mac and cheese is a tasty delight! And a somewhat healthier comfort food dish. 

When we lived in Paris back when our daughters were little, I used to buy La Vache qui rit - Laughing Cow - cheese as snacks for them because 1. It was creamy and delicious, and 2. The little triangles came individually wrapped which made handing them to small children a breeze, plus 3. They didn’t need to be refrigerated if I was packing them for a trip to the park. Bonus: They are high in the calcium needed for growing bones.

Nowadays, you do find them on display in the refrigerated section of the supermarket but the official website assures me that they are actually shelf stable due to the high temperature at which they are created. 

When I was developing this recipe, I was looking to up my protein intake and cottage cheese came to mind. But cottage cheese, even blended till smooth, isn’t all that creamy and that's when I remembered the triangle cheese and how it's made!

According to the website, “The Laughing Cow cheese is made by mixing milk powder (which is blended with water to bring it back to milk), cheeses and butter with emulsifying salts. The emulsifying salts simply play the same role as the citrate in fondue Savoyarde, stopping separation and creating a lovely creamy texture.” Who doesn't love a cheese fondue? It’s been made that way since 1921!

I also added a good amount of freshly grated Parmesan for more cheesy oomph! This was a hit with my husband who wanted to go back for seconds at dinnertime but restrained himself. But guess what he had for breakfast the next morning. Yep!

Cauliflower Spinach Mac and Cheese

I used the lighter Laughing Cow cheese and low-fat cottage cheese but you can use full fat versions, if desired. I like the little bitty elbow macaroni for this but use whatever kind you can find. Just know that weight will be a more accurate measure than cups, if you do use a bigger macaroni. 

Ingredients

2 teaspoons fine sea salt

8oz or 225g cauliflower florets

8 1/3 oz or 235g baby spinach

6 oz or 170g elbow macaroni (a well-rounded cup)

Olive oil for greasing the baking dish

10oz or 284g low fat cottage cheese

½ cup or 120ml milk

2 tablespoons cornstarch

8 Laughing Cow (light) cheese triangles (120g)

3 ½ oz or 100g Parmesan, grated

Fine sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Cayenne, optional

For topping:

1 oz or 28g Parmesan

3 tablespoons panko

Sprinkle paprika or cayenne, optional

Method

Put a large pot of water on the stove to boil with the salt. 

Chop the cauliflower florets roughly and set aside. 

I'm picky about my spinach so even when the bag says "washed and ready to eat," I go through it leaf by leaf, tossing any bruised ones and pulling the stems off. If you aren't so picky, skip this step.

When the water comes to the boil, add in the macaroni and set a timer for four minutes less than the recommended time for cooking it al dente. 

When the timer goes off, add in the cauliflower. 

Cook for one minute less than the prescribed al dente time. 

My macaroni said 9 mins to al dente, so I boiled it 5 minutes to start then added the cauliflower and set a timer for 3 minutes: Only 8 minutes total cooking time for the pasta.  

Drain the macaroni and cauliflower in a colander, retaining some of the water for possible use later. Rest the hot pot off the stove so it can cool a little.

Preheat your oven to 350ºF or 180°C and grease a casserole dish with a little olive oil.

Blend the cottage cheese, milk and cornstarch in a blender or with a hand blender until smooth and creamy.

Pour the mixture into your pasta pot over low-to-medium heat. Cook for a minute or two, stirring well.

Add in the Laughing Cow and grated Parmesan cheeses. 

Stir continuously until the cheeses melt and the sauce is thoroughly heated through and bubbling. Cook for a few minutes, stirring constantly so it doesn’t catch. 

Add in the baby spinach and give it a good stir. The spinach will wilt quickly!  

Add in the macaroni and cauliflower. Stir well to thoroughly combine.

Taste the mixture and add salt to your taste, as needed. With all that cheese, you may not need any. Add a few generous grinds of black pepper and a good sprinkle of cayenne, if using, and stir again. If it seems a little dry, you can add a little of the saved pasta water. 

Spoon the mixture into your prepared casserole dish. 

Mix together the topping ingredients.

Sprinkle them evenly on top with some paprika or cayenne, if using.

Bake for 30 minutes in your preheated oven or until the dish is hot and bubbling and golden on top. You can put the broiler/grill on for the last couple of minutes to get the top more brown, if you’d like.

Enjoy!

It’s Sunday FunDay and today we are sharing recipes for everyone’s favorite comfort food, mac and cheese! Many thanks to our host, Camilla of Culinary Cam. Check out the links below. 

• Cauliflower Spinach Mac and Cheese by Food Lust People Love
• Gruyére and Emmentaler Macaroni and Cheese with Ham and Sourdough by Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Instant Pot Chicken Mac and Cheese by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Keto Roasted Cauliflower Cheese by Sneha's Recipe
• Spicy Cheezy Orzo by Sid's Sea Palm Cooking

 

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join. 

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Chocolate Coconut Flour Cookies

These delicious chocolate coconut flour cookies are naturally gluten free but they are also made with Swerve, making them diabetic friendly, low carb and relatively low calorie as well. You won't miss any of those things! 

One of my dearest and oldest friends is on weight loss journey for her health. She is doing amazingly well and we are all so proud of her for the lifestyle changes she’s made and her perseverance in pursuit of better health. A while back, she and her husband were going to be in town for doctors’ visits so I invited them to stop by after for tea before they had to drive the couple of hours back home. 

I made some savory snacks and baked these cookies as our sweet treat. She liked them so much that I happily wrapped up the leftovers for her to take home. I call that a win! 

Chocolate Coconut Flour Cookies

This recipe is adapted from one on today’s Sunday FunDay host’s blog, Cook with Renu. Her original recipe uses honey instead of my Swerve. If you are looking for lovely healthy recipes, many with alternative gluten free flours and little refined sugar, go have a browse! 

Ingredients for 12-15 cookies

⅓ cup or 28g coconut flour

¼ cup or 30g unsweetened cocoa powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

⅛ teaspoon or a generous pinch fine sea salt

2 eggs

¼ cup or 50g brown Swerve

1 tablespoon water

⅓ cup or 75g coconut oil - melted and at room temperature – or vegetable oil

½ cup or 90g 63% cacao extra dark chocolate chips

Method

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and line a baking pan with baking parchment or a silicone liner. I actually used two pans because all my cookies didn’t quite fit on mine, which only holds 12. That said, my cookie scoop was small. You could probably make 12!

In a large mixing bowl sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt.

In another bowl whisk the eggs, along with the Swerve, water and melted oil.

Toss the chocolate chips into the dry ingredients and stir to coat. 

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and combine until well incorporated.

Leave the mixture to rest for five minutes so the coconut flour can absorb the liquid.

Use a cookie scoop or a spoon and put dollops of the dough on your prepared baking pan/s. 

Bake in your preheated oven for 12-15 minutes, until the cookies are firm on the top yet give a little if you poke them gently. They will firm up more as they cool. Like with all dark chocolate cookies, you can’t use color to see if they are cooked! 

Cool the cookies on a wire rack. Once cooled, store them in an airtight container, if they don’t get eaten right away! 

Enjoy! 

It’s Sunday FunDay and today we are sharing recipes made with coconut flour. Many thanks to our host, Renu of Cooking with Renu. Check out the links below.

• Chocolate Coconut Flour Cookies - Diabetic Friendly from Food Lust People Love
• Coconut Crusted Chicken from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Coconut Shortbread Cookies from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Gluten Free Chocolate Banana Coconut Flour Cake  from Cook with Renu
• Gluten Free Coffee Cake from A Messy Kitchen
• Keto Flaxseed & Coconut Flour Flatbread Sneha's Recipe

 

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join. 

Pin these Chocolate Coconut Flour Cookies! 

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Maritime Hodge Podge - Creamy Summer Vegetables

Maritime Hodge Podge is a wonderfully rich dish from Eastern Canada, made with a variety of fresh summer vegetables, butter, and, of course, cream. And every family seems to have their own combination!

It was fun to delve into recipes for a dish I had never heard of prior to starting my search for Canadian recipes for this week’s Sunday FunDay post celebrating Canada Day. Hodge Podge caught my eye because: Fun name. But it took me down a rabbit hole with many tunnels, right, left and deeper. 

Side dish or main course? Add bacon or should it be strictly vegetarian? Sweet peas or sugar snap peas? Green beans, wax beans, cauliflower??? Little liquid (some called theirs a stew!) or enough to make it actual soup? So many questions came up and I found just about as many answers while researching this lovely dish that originated in an area of Eastern Canada called the Maritime, which is a collective term for the three small, neighboring provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island.

It's cooked in early summer when the vegetables are new and young with, apparently, whatever you have available to you locally. Lore says families don't actually follow specific recipes because the produce they might have varies. That said, I found a plethora of recipes shared online because Canadians are generous that way!

Sharp-eyed readers may notice that I wasn’t cooking this in my usual kitchen because we were on a week’s holiday on the west coast of Brittany at an Airbnb. The markets were fabulous and we were spoiled for choice in the fresh produce selection. I was delighted to find the yellow wax beans – haricots jaunes! They were in the ingredient list of quite a few of the recipes I found online for hodge podge and I hadn’t seen them at home. Score! I did bring the baby new potatoes with me so they are Jersey Royals. 

Maritime Hodge Podge – Creamy Summer Vegetables

As mentioned above, recipes had various combinations of vegetables so use what’s fresh, young and tender where you live. This is a dish where the vegetables should be the stars. Most recipes tended to have more potatoes and carrots than the other veg but I’m also leaving those amounts up to you. I’ll put my weights below, just as a guide. In the traditional spirit, I used what I had! 

Ingredients (Vegetable amounts are super flexible, see above!)

3 ½ oz or 100g smoked thick cut bacon, cut into pieces 

1 medium onion (6oz or 170g)

2 teaspoons fine sea salt

Baby new potatoes (6oz or 170g)

Cauliflower florets (4oz or 113g)

Young carrots (6oz or 170g)

Fresh wax beans (3oz or 100g)

Fresh peas or use either snow peas or young broad beans (6oz or 170g)

2 tablespoons butter, softened

2 tablespoons flour

½ cup or 120ml whipping or thick cream

Fine sea salt and fresh ground pepper – to taste

Method

Scrub your vegetables or peel as needed. Peel and chop the onion.

Cut the young carrots in halves or thirds. Trim the wax beans and, if using snow peas or broad beans, remove the string and cut into smaller pieces, diagonally. 

For the young broad beans, I use my sharp potato peeler to trim off the sides.

Cook the bacon in a skillet over medium-high heat until golden brown, about 10 minutes. 

Remove with a slotted spoon, leaving the bacon fat behind. If you end up with a lot of fat, you can take a tablespoon or so out and discard. Drain the bacon on a paper towel-lined plate. 

Reheat the skillet on medium heat and stir in the chopped onion. Cook until the onion has softened. Set aside.

In a large pot, bring 3 or 4 cups of water to a boil with the 2 teaspoons of salt.  Add in the potatoes and carrots. 

Boil for 3-4 minutes, then add in the cauliflower.

Boil for 3 minutes, then add in the peas, snow peas or broad beans. 

Continue boiling until the potatoes are cooked through. 

Meanwhile, mix the butter and flour together thoroughly to form a paste French chefs call beurre manié. I put the butter in the bowl first, then add the flour, using a spoon to press it into a paste. A beurre manié is ideal for thickening a sauce when you don’t want to risk lumps by adding in flour alone. 

Drain off all but 1 cup or 240ml of the water, leaving the vegetables behind in the pot. I find the easiest way to judge this is to drain all the water, catching the amount I need in a measuring cup. 

Add half of your water back into the pot in the middle of the vegetables. Add the beurre manié to the pot and stir gently to mix it with the water. 

Once the butter is melted, give the whole thing another gentle stir. 

Add in the cooked onions and pour in the cream and stir gently.

Simmer for 8 to 10 minutes. If it looks a little dry, add more of your reserved vegetable boiling water. That’s why we saved a whole cup!

Add in most of the bacon, setting a small handful aside for garnish. 

Add some salt, if you’d like, and a few generous grinds of black pepper. Stir gently.

I served this as a side dish so, as you can see, it came to the table in a serving bowl with the reserved bacon on top. 

Enjoy! 

It’s Sunday FunDay and today we are sharing recipes ahead of Canada Day, which falls on July 1st, the anniversary of the Constitution Act of 1867, which created the self-governing nation originally called the Dominion of Canada. Kudos to our northern neighbors and I hope you enjoy some of their regional recipes! Many thanks to our co-hosts, Mayuri of Mayuri's Jikoni and Amy of Amy's Cooking Adventures. Check out the links below. 

• Canadian Butter Tarts by Karen’s Kitchen Stories
• Cherry Chip Cake by Amy's Cooking Adventures
• Maple Banana Muffins by Sid's Sea Palm Cooking
• Maritime Hodge Podge - Creamy Summer Vegetables by Food Lust People Love
• Nanaimo City's Namesake Bars by A Messy Kitchen
• Pouding Chômeur by Mayuri's Jikoni
• Pumpkin Pie with Homemade Pie Crust by Sneha's Recipe
• Quick and Easy Poutine by A Day in the Life on the Farm

 

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

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