I've been thinking a lot about adaptation lately. And also about cauliflower. But...I am pretty much always thinking about cauliflower.

Anyone who follows my blog or knows me in person is familiar with my tendency to rhapsodize about the magical transformative abilities of humble cauliflower. From pizza to rice to tortillas to this layered lasagna thing I make every week (which I promise to eventually write about here) lower-carb, cauliflower-ified versions of high-carb starchy foods are my jam (and usually, my dinner).

The thing about cauliflower transformation is that, even as a chewy tortilla, or in crispy-edged pizza form, its true flavor and texture never actually, truly disappears. No cauliflower creation ever ceases to truly be cauliflower...it's just presented in a different, gussied-up form. Sort of like when I have my hair and makeup done: the results are different, fancified, maybe prettier, but at the core, essentially the same as before.

Or maybe like when I get married in just six weeks? I'll be transformed to an extent then, right? I'll wear a special dress, have my hair and makeup done. Put on a ring made especially for me? And then, in front of friends and family, Evan and I will make our union legal. After the wedding, as he and I have been doing for the past four years, we'll continue to adapt. To married life, to permanent love.

But underneath it all, after the ketubah and marriage license have been signed, after my dress, with its intense boob-securing infrastructure (I have been promised several times that the dress won't require a bra. I am suspicious of this.), has been exchanged for a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and Evan's dapper suit has been replaced by a more casual (but still extremely dapper) get-up, we'll find that, at our respective cores, we are still the same as before. Transformed, adapted--maybe with a few new ingredients added, as it were--but essentially the same as we've always been.

Kind of like this Buffalo Cauliflower: decorated, adapted, transformed...but at its heart, still cauliflower.