Costco run today. (HAD to -- we were out of cream, and it's a LOT cheaper there than anywhere else.)

I went through, buying what I'd normally buy:

Sliced cheddar (we're out).
The aforementioned cream.
Coffee.
Coconut oil (emptied a jar, so bought 2)
A wild mushroom mix (dried) they had that I wanted to try
Some Black-bean spaghetti I thought might be good. (I don't handle beans well on LC, but my hubby & kids will)
A bag of almonds
3 bags of riced cauliflower, because we were out at Thanksgiving and I was annoyed. (I hate running out.)
Butter.

This is a pretty typical cart for me.

We get to the door, where you hand over your receipt & they count your purchases.

The woman counts my cart. Then she kind of stops, and LOOKS. Then she turns to look me in the eye and asks, "How long have you been on Low Carb?"



We had a brief chat, before someone else needed to be cleared for exit. But it was too good not to share.

That’s great! Love it. Thanks for sharing. How is the cauliflower rice? I haven’t tried as I’m not too much into cauliflower. Where is it located in Costco? Frozen??

Frozen food section.

We treat it like mashed.

While I DO enjoy cauliflower, on it's own, it's not something I would usually go out of my way to eat. However, as a potato substitute, it's pretty amazing.

We used to do it by hand: Get frozen, cook it (WELL!) and use a masher on it, then treat it like potatoes (this means lots of butter, cheese, and other flavorful goodies.) Have served it at dinner without saying what it was and gotten nothing but compliments. (To be fair, I TYPICALLY have mashed potatoes on top of something like shepherd's pie, rather than on its own... Though there was one memorable Thanksgiving.) People who HATE cauliflower compliment the "mashed potatoes".

I think one of the things is that cruciferous veggies (like cauli) STINK, especially when cooked. (Scent and taste are actually consider part of the same sensory system, so the stink is relevant. Some of the cruciferous only give off that distinctive sulphur-odor when overcooked, but it's all of them do it.) And cauli stinks worse than most. But mashing it lets that distinctive scent dissipate, and then you're just left with a white, mashable, (nutrient-dense) vegetable that has a pleasant hint of "sharpness", but blend really well with all the other things you typically serve potatoes with.

I love it, because... Well, I was never a HUGE fan of mashed potatoes, but one of their jobs, on a plate, was to soak up stuff. The juice from that steak. The sauce on that chicken. And it holds that glorious "cheese sauce" my husband makes. ("Cheese sauce" doesn't capture it. There's some cheese... and cream... and cream cheese... It's evolved over time, but is always amazing)

I've found it frozen at Costco and Trader Joe's. (I know that what both of those stores have in stock can vary, regionally. I live in Florida.)

You can get the same result by either mashing cooked cauliflower, or whizzing some fresh through a food processor (to "rice" it in advance) and then cooking it.

My local Hannafords has a bag of frozen riced cauliflower with cheese sauce that has good ingredients and is easy to fix.

I love that someone looked into your cart and deduced that you were a low carber. I shopped in grocery store yesterday (unusual since I usually get what I need at Wally World and Sam's) and was struck by how much carbage (aka poison) is in the store! Almost all the "food" in the store is loaded with grains or sugar or both!

My cart contained a ribeye steak, cream cheese, pork rinds, ground pork, eggs, sunflower seeds and heavy cream.

Some of my other staples are baby spinach, cauliflower, fresh green beans, butter, sour cream and bacon but I didn't need any of those.

Had a low carber notice my cart they probably would have guessed at my WOE.

Live well.

My boys love cauliflower with sliced cheese like meunster or cheddar, and heat/melt in microwave. Use a glass pie plate


Ya, sad to see theSAD foods on the conveyor belt at checkout. We are trying another month of wheat free for the teens. It is a challenge.

My go to dish with cauliflower has butter, cream and Parmesan cheese. It's like an Alfredo sauce of sorts.

Too funny! Did not know Costco sold riced cauliflower, will keep that in mind when I’m there next. Thanks!

Our Costco started with 4 - 1 pound bags of Cascadian Farms cauliflower in a box, but then switched to one giant 4 pound lump of Green Giant...certainly not as easy. During the holidays, it also has already prepared mashed cauliflower, just heat n serve.

Picked up a huge, super lush Christmas wreath for $16, decorated with pine cones and berries, let it soak a few days, and is already up.

Here chunks of frozen cauliflower are half the price of riced, so I buy that and steam it for ~25 minutes and then mash w/butter & salt.

I'll keep my eyes open on my next visit to Costco. Sounds like I'll need an ice pick or chisel to chip off serving portions at home . . .

Aldi's has very cheap riced cauliflower in our area now.

I lucked out yesterday at Walmart. They had 12 oz bags of fresh riced cauliflower that were marked down to 88 cents because they were on their use by date. They seemed fine but I went ahead and made a big pot of cream of cauliflower soup last night before they could go bad. It really hit the spot since we have snow on the ground already.

I also usually buy frozen florets because of price and just cook it a long time.

So I find frozen cauli easier to mash than fresh. (Frozen veggies are often a little "mushier" than fresh. In this case, it's a bonus.)

Locally, I have a really hard time finding frozen cauli except in tiny (ie: overpriced) bags. I have 2 chest freezers in my garage. I don't like buying small portions... and those tiny little "I hold almost a cup!" bags I can find if I'm lucky would literally get lost. So a big giant bag that's already riced? I'll take it!


Didn't know about Aldi carrying it. We've had several Aldi open up around here in the past year or 2, but I've really only been in the once. (You get in "ruts" with where you shop... if it's not on my routine, it's hard to think of it. And since I hate all forms of shopping and am usually in a hurry, I tend to go where I KNOW I can find what I need. One of these days, I need to go in Aldi when I'm not in a rush, and check it out.)

I work in a grocery store, and yep, I can tell when a customer eats LC too, especially if they're regular customers, because you see a trend in the type of food they buy.

There are instances when I think a customer probably does LC, because most of their cart is decidedly LC, but there's still a couple of basic carby items in there. That may be because someone in the family is not LC. At least that's the way it is for my cart - DH doesn't do LC, so that's the only reason why my cart will still have some very basic carby stuff in it, such as a small bag of potatoes, box of spaghetti, box of saltine crackers, frozen peas, corn, and such. I don't even buy those very often, since they don't make up the bulk of DH's carb intake, and he shops for his own cereal, pop tarts, cookies, chips, ice cream, etc.