Hurricane Harvey Guilt & Low-Carb Cauliflower Creamed Spinach

Hurricane Harvey was supposed to be “just another Texas storm.” That’s what we told ourselves, sipping tepid coffee while checking Doppler radar on cracked phones. The wind wasn’t even the bad part. It was the slow creep of water under the door. A polite knock, then boom — your life is floating in your living room.

I was lucky. That’s the hard part.

When your house doesn’t flood and your power stays on and your dog doesn’t panic and your fridge doesn’t die… you feel weirdly awful. Like, deep in your belly, there’s this knot. Not guilt exactly. Not sadness either. Something muddy in between.

I called it Harvey guilt.

It’s not that you wanted your home destroyed. It’s not that you wish you could swap places with your friend whose car floated down a highway like a lost paddleboat. It’s more like… survival shame. You watch people lose everything. And you’re sitting on the couch eating kettle chips, scrolling Twitter, wondering if you should offer your guest room or just send 50 bucks to a GoFundMe.

A lotta people felt it. Quietly.

No one really talks about it now. Like if we all keep our mouths shut, we won’t have to look at the way Houston was turned inside out, and how some of us walked away clean. Still got our dry clothes and fancy coffee beans. Still cooking low-carb meals in a warm kitchen, pretending we’re somehow “in it together.”

But I remember.

I remember the hum of the A/C while others had fans strapped to their backs like post-apocalyptic gear. I remember boiling eggs while neighbors were boiling flood water. And I remember making cauliflower creamed spinach on the third day of the storm because I was bored and trying to avoid the news.

Food has always been a weird kind of therapy for me. Stirring things helps me not spiral. Chopping onions makes me feel like I’m doing something useful with my hands when my brain wants to short-circuit.

So yeah, I made spinach.

Not just any spinach. I made the kind that doesn’t make you feel like trash after. No heavy cream, no flour. Just enough comfort to soothe the edges of a week full of chaos, but not so much that you end up face-first in a food coma.

Cauliflower, baby. That unsung hero of the low-carb kitchen. It’s bland, it’s pale, it’s kinda stinks when steamed—but damn, it holds space. It’s like the tofu of the vegetable world. Ready to take on whatever flavor you throw at it.

I started with a head of cauliflower. Broke it up into florets like I was tearing bread. Boiled it till fork-tender, not mushy. Mushy cauliflower is a betrayal. Nobody wants to eat hot snow.

While that was going, I sautéed a heap of spinach. Not a handful. A heap. More than you think you need. Spinach is a liar. It looks like a mountain and shrinks into a sad green puddle the second it hits the pan.

Little olive oil, couple cloves of garlic, salt that costs more than it should. The spinach sizzled and softened. Smelled like a proper meal. Like someone gave a damn, even if just for a second.

Blended the cauliflower with a splash of almond milk and a lump of cream cheese—yeah, yeah, I know that’s not really dairy-free but listen, this ain’t a church potluck. We’re healing here. We’re not saints.

Threw in some nutmeg, white pepper, a stupid amount of grated parmesan.

Poured that silky, warm, pale gold liquid over the spinach and stirred it like I was stirring secrets into the pot. That’s the thing about food. It can hold your feelings without ever talking back.

I ate it standing up. Bowl in one hand, spoon in the other, still in the kitchen. No table. No napkin. Just me and the hum of guilt I couldn’t shake. My neighbors were bailing water outta their garages. And I was eating cauliflower creamed spinach like it was the only thing keeping me from disappearing.

And maybe it was.

Maybe comfort food isn’t just about taste or macros or even nostalgia. Maybe it’s about anchoring yourself to a moment where everything else feels like a flood.

There’s something wildly indulgent about choosing a low-carb life during a natural disaster. It feels wrong. Feels petty. But also—feels like control. A way to say, “I can’t fix the storm but I can pick what I put in my body today.”

That’s not nothing.

I brought a casserole of that creamed spinach to a shelter the next day. Lady at the desk looked at me like I was a bit cracked, showing up with a bubbling tray of green mush. I told her it’s low-carb and full of love. She said, “Well, it’s hot, so that’s good enough.”

They scraped the tray clean.

I went back home and made it again.

I made it a lot that fall. Every time I felt the weight of what we didn’t lose, I made it. Some people journal. Some people drink. Some of us blend cauliflower and pretend it’s okay.

I can’t tell you it healed anything. But it filled a hole. A weird little low-carb hole shaped like guilt and survival and spinach. And maybe that’s enough.

If you want to make it, it’s not hard. You probably got most of the stuff already.

Here’s how I do it, more or less:

One head cauliflower. Not too big, not too small.
Half a brick of cream cheese. Or coconut cream if you’re feelin’ vegan.
A splash (maybe 1/2 cup?) of almond milk or whatever milk-like thing you got.
Two big bags of spinach. The kind that makes you wonder if you’ll ever stop chewing.
Two cloves garlic. Or more. Garlic is personal.
Olive oil. Don’t measure. Just drizzle like you mean it.
A generous handful of parmesan.
Salt, pepper, nutmeg, white pepper if you’re fancy.