Crockpot Pulled Pork

 I pretty much only eat fish and chicken but on a rare occasion I'll treat my husband to some pork or beef. I decided to make a version of pulled pork from a fellow blogger. I used McCormick Asian Spice instead of the five spice seasoning, almond oil instead of sesame oil, and I tweaked the soy sauce a litte but it was basically still the same recipe. I drained extra liquid about half way through and started to shred the pork. Use any fresh herbs you have; I used green onions, cilantro, and basil. I really liked this and would have been great as a taco filing too. Of course you could serve this with asian noodles or rice, but I'm on a pretty clean diet. 

Almond Cheese Spread

I can't tell you how many times I've said I love cheese on this blog or in conversation, but I love alternatives too. The Culture Kitchen makes a great cashew cheese spread and it randomly popped into my head the other day. Now the average person would run to the store and go buy some but I said hey I could try and make some of my own.

I did a little research and had a few recipes but I pretty much went off the cuff and did my own thing. If you look for recipes you'll see people mostly use cashews but since I had recently bought 5 pounds of almonds I thought I would use those as my base. Again you're going to need a super strong blender to make this and truly the best investment for the kitchen you could make. My first go around does not have any cultures in it, but I can work on that next time. 

2 cups soaked almonds, soaked over night

juice of 1 lemon

salt, pepper, garlic, parsley, dill

almond oil, as needed

water, as needed

3 tbsp apple cider vinegar

Cauliflower Rice

Well I'm currently at 95% grain free but sometimes you just want rice, so when I stumbled upon a recipe that simulated rice using cauliflower I thought it was worth my time and curiosity to try. You definitely need a really good food processor or blender to make this happen properly but the process is fairly simple.

Chop up a raw head of Cauliflower put it in your food processor and pulse. You want a small mashed consistency and not mush; once you get started you'll understand the difference.

Once you have it all blended up into "rice" You can put it in the refrigerator covered to stir fry later or immediately turn on your burner and fry it up. Mix in any additional vegetables you want; I did mushrooms and spinach, some fresh herbs and onions. It looks like rice, kind of. Overall this was good.

Original recipe came from Models Do Eat