Cauliflower emerges from the shadows

It must be the paleo craze.  My bad luck:  just when I discovered that I really enjoy cauliflower cooked in some surprising new ways, the demand soars and the supply crashes.  What we need is price controls.

18 comments:

Ymar Sakar said...

Supply wouldn't have crashed if the EPA wasn't on all those people who wanted to grow cauliflower and transport it.

Just look at the containers they need to put milk in now a days. Via transport.

In a decentralized economy, the market reacts to limited supplies within a few months if not weeks.

It's very difficult to have a real decentralized economy that is built on massive scale.

E Hines said...

Nah, we need supply controls and production mandates.

Oh, wait....

Eric Hines

Anonymous said...

It IS the Paleo craze, or maybe the Keto one. Some people think they can make it taste like rice.

If you have a garden, you could plant some Romanesco varieties (weirdest-looking, twisty, pointed florets).

I kid you not, in California they're talking about "wasting" water on agriculture. This is the State that flooded an entire river during a drought, and uses at least as much water as the farmers do, making sure that local bait fish do not get killed when the local rivers would otherwise dry up (due to drought).

Farmers "waste" water growing plants and animals! Who knew?

Valerie

Gringo said...

You can't grow any?

Eric Blair said...

Heh. But I haven't seen any shortage of Cauliflower around where I am at.

Grim said...

We have a similar problem, Valerie, in that there's apparently a treaty with Mexico that obligates the Army Corps of Engineers to release a certain amount of freshwater through the Chattahoochee river whether or not there's enough rain. So the Atlanta reservoir sometimes gets pretty low...

Texan99 said...

Water rights are a hot issue locally between the farmers upstream and the conservationists here at the estuaries, especially when it comes to the whooping cranes. It's hard to overstate how important the whooping cranes are in my county.

As for growing cauliflower, we've never had any luck with broccoli or brussels sprouts, but others say they can grow them in the winter here, so it really should be possible. I've read that the problem may be that they need tons of fertilizer, so that may be our problem, plus our tendency to grow either under the trees behind a deer fence, or in the full sun in areas for the deer depredation is intense. Clearly our deer fence is not ideally located.

I don't know about substituting cauliflower for rice, but I'm hooked on a "cauliflower tots" recipe. It turns out that what this rather bland vegetable needs more than anything else is a bit of baked crust on it, preferably with a small amount of cheese to give it some texture. If you do that, it's amazingly tasty in its own right, not just as a faux potato. I've taken to buying a lot of it.

Grim said...

I've heard there's a great pizza recipe to be made with cauliflower used as the crust.

I'll ask the wife if she has any tips. She's amazing with plants. Right now she's got a bazillion violets and strep-to-somethings as her main effort, but the whole place is covered up in her various plants. :)

E Hines said...

I've heard there's a great pizza recipe to be made with cauliflower used as the crust.

Maybe for feeding the compost heap; otherwise, no good can come of insulting perfectly good pizza. Cauliflower--bleh. There's no shortage of this...plant...in my house.

Eric Hines

Gringo said...

Deer would definitely be a problem.An electric fence was the way my parents dealt with deer- which was not always successful.

And on the Gu'f Coast, cauliflower would be, as you point out, definitely a winter crop. Which reminds me of the wintering capabilities of kale. My mother grew kale in NE, which we could see green above the snow. That is hardy!

Texan99 said...

It's true, kale seems impervious to cold. At most it seems to wilt a bit if it gets cold, but I guess the moisture gets sucked down into the roots or something, because it bounces right back as soon as it warms up. Same for mesclun.

Texan99 said...

Gringo, I've seen that pizza-crust recipe and have been meaning to try it. Not that I think it's a substitute for pizza crust, but it looks like a perfectly tasty platform for tomatoes, basil, sausage, etc. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't found I thoroughly enjoyed the tots. I shall report back!

Texan99 said...

That should have been directed to "Grim."

Grim said...

The wife says to start now, and you should be ready to harvest by April. She doesn't have any special tips for cauliflower, but she says this is really the right time to undertake growing it if you want to try.

Texan99 said...

If it's the right time for you to plant where you are, it probably was the right time here six weeks ago. But I may give it a try.

Grim said...

I asked her about that, and she said she thinks you're in the right time now.

douglas said...

I seriously dislike cauliflower, except for the way my Mother-in-law makes it in the Hungarian fashion- a whole cauliflower head in a bowl, coated with sour cream and topped with bread crumbs, then baked. the sour cream and bread crumbs add an almost savory flavor, and the baking takes out the raw texture I'm not a fan of, and voila, the only cauliflower I'll eat.

Texan99 said...

If you like that, you'd surely appreciate a cauliflower gratin, to add cheese to the bread crumbs. Until recently, that was my hands-down favorite cauliflower approach.