Cauliflower In My Mac and Cheese

Because of food allergies, we have been around the world and back looking for “substitutes” for those foods we have to avoid. Substitutes that are safe and that we enjoy eating are like finding treasure, because the same old meals day in and day out get very old, very fast.

Last June my Aunt found a wonderful substitute that has been huge in expanding our horizons on the eating front.

The Sneaky Chef’s No Nut Butter.

We love it.  In many different ways.

Tonight I was thinking about the Sneaky Chef and how she started out encouraging families to enhance their intake of good nutritious foods by “sneaking” certain veggie purees into different dishes.  I remember my failed attempt to add cauliflower to homemade macaroni and cheese.  I thought it was delicious myself, but I didn’t puree the cauliflower quite enough, and my oldest figured it out.  To this day, she hesitates to eat my homemade mac and cheese, worried what I might have put in it.

The idea is a solid one though.  Sometimes eating nutritiously is hard to get children (and some adults) to do.  But if you can put something in it that is good for them in the midst of something else, something they don’t suspect, that’s all for the better.  (At least until they can learn to make healthier choices on their own.)

Some days it’s whatever it takes, y’all.

As I was thinking about this, it occurred to me that the One who created all that is within our sight and so much more seems to use this “slipping something in unexpected” technique too.

How many times have I been in a hard and broken situation and found some nugget of joy or beauty?

It has happened more often than you’d think.

Goodness tucked in the midst of something that you’d never have suspected.  A kindness in a time of darkness.  Joy in the midst of pain.

I think that’s pretty cool.

But then I like cauliflower in my mac and cheese.

May we all find a nugget of good in the midst of the broken or mundane or somewhere else we least expect to find it.

Love to all.