Cauliflower takes the place of couscous or rice in this tasty side dish. I got the idea for this recipe from the book Grain Brain, which has some recipes in the back. I realized that I wanted to write a blog post about this recipe after I started making it so that’s why some of the ingredients are already prepped in the photo.

Cauliflower “Couscous”

• 2 tbsp unsalted butter (use olive oil if you want this to be vegan)
• 1/2 cup diced onion
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 head cauliflower, grated (you can use a food processor or a cheese grater, either will work)
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup pine nuts
• 1/4 cup golden raisins (you can use regular raisins instead)
• 2 tbsp minced parsley
• pepper to taste

Melt the butter over medium heat. Add the onion and cook for about 5 minutes, or until softened. Add the garlic. Cook and stir for about a minute. Add the cauliflower, cinnamon and salt. Cook and stir for 10-15 minutes.

Stir in the pine nuts, raisins, parsley and pepper. Stir for about a minute.

Serve as a side dish or on its own.

Ingredients that were free of packaging

• Onion
• Garlic
• Cauliflower – Sometimes cauliflower heads are wrapped in plastic wrap but I got this at the farmers market and it was unwrapped. I’ve noticed that cauliflower heads are unwrapped in Canada too. I guess its an American thing to wrap them.
• Cinnamon – Bulk
• Salt – Bulk
• Pine nuts – Bulk
• Raisins – Bulk
• Pepper – Bulk

Ingredients that had packaging

• Butter – In the US butter is sold in paper boxes and individual sticks are wrapped with wax paper. In Canada 1/2 lb or 1 lb bricks of butter are sold wrapped in foil. Either way there is packaging involved.
• Parsley – Pretty minimal, but this had a rubber band and a plastic tag.