Tofu + Bacon??

I have seen a lot of recipes for tofu bacon running around the internet and I was curious to try it out.

Thin strips of tofu marinating in soy sauce, liquid smoke, mirin and nutritional yeast.

When I read the tofu bacon recipes most of the comments rave about how it tastes just like bacon. This I find hard to imagine.


I pan fried the tofu until it was crispy and it ended up looking like this:

While the tofu had a bacon-like look to it, it in no way tasted like bacon. The only way you could think this would taste like bacon is if you never ate any pork product your whole life - including bacon.


It just tasted like crispy tofu with seasoning. 


So, I am still perplexed by the whole tofu + bacon thing.


I ended up having a bowl of veggies.

Ignore the tofu bacon - I didn't even bother to eat it.

This was one of my 'toss everything together and see if it works' meals.

 
I put 1 chopped tomato, corn kernels cut fresh from the cob, mushrooms and black beans into a skillet to simmer.

I also added 2 tsp. of taco seasoning to the pan.

While the vegetables simmered I put a corn tortilla in another pan to get crispy.

When the tomato started to release its juices and the mushrooms had started to brown, I plated the veggies.

I sprinkled the chopped up tortilla on top and added some diced avocado.

Fresh chopped cilantro adorned the top.

 A very delicious breakfast but now I am behind on protein for the day.

I sense a protein bar in my near future.

Peanut glazed sweet potatoes and tofu

I had planned on making peanut and banana tofu with sweet potatoes but my bananas were beyond over ripe so that idea went out the window.

Instead I went with a gold nugget mandarin orange and a japanese sweet potato.

The Japanese sweet potato is definitely NOT orange inside:

I chopped up 1/2 the sweet potato and put it into the steamer until it was mostly cooked. Then it went into a skillet with a tiny bit of coconut oil until they were nice and crispy:

Then I assembled the ingredients for the sauce.

Soy sauce, honey, peanut butter, vinegar and hot chili sauce.

 

 

 I mixed together:

2 Tbsp. of peanut butter
2 Tbsp. of hot water
2 tsp. of vinegar
2 tsp. of soy sauce
1 1/2 tsp. of honey
1/8 tsp. of chili sauce


I cubed up a portion of my locally made tofu.

The tofu went into the skillet and sauteed until just crispy. At this point I tossed the sweet potatoes back in and then I drizzled the peanut sauce on top. I stirred gently until everything was well coated in the sauce.

 

 If you like a sweeter sauce, I would definitely add more honey because this one turned out barely sweet at all.


And the golden nugget mandarin oranges were interesting. I expected them to be really sweet but they weren't. They were just very low in acidity without being sweeter. Nice.

Imagine a picture of a cup of coffee (which I forgot to snap a picture of).

I hope everyone is having a great Saturday!

First meal

Sometimes I get so busy/distracted in the mornings that I don't eat right away.

Today was one of those days. 


It was getting close to 11:30 before I realized I hadn't eaten anything yet. 

So, instead of calling it breakfast or brunch I decided to call it first meal :-)

Tofu miso scramble.

I started with a few simple ingredients:

Carrot, grated ginger, tofu and green cabbage.

The carrot and cabbage went into a pan on medium heat with a teaspoon of coconut oil.

When the vegetables were softened (about 7 minutes) I turned the heat to low and added in the ginger, tofu and the miso mixture.

A mixture of 1Tbsp. of miso paste, 1/4 cup of water and 1 Tbsp. of soy sauce.

I covered the pan and let it simmer on low for another five minutes.

The dish turned out somewhere between a stew and a soup. The veggies still had some crunch and the tofu picked up ginger/miso flavor. Yum!

There was quite a bit of sauce after cooking - so this would also do well ladled over a bed of rice.

Sweet breakfast tofu

Sweet breakfast tofu? It is best explained with a picture.

Tofu pan seared with butter and brown sugar.

This morning I woke up to find a very unusual circumstance, there was plenty of kibble and hardly anything in my fridge.

But I did have some strawberries and some tofu.

I don't mind eating tofu plain - but I knew I wasn't in the mood for a smoothie so out came the saute pan.

I seared the tofu in butter and sprinkled on some brown sugar at the end. It didn't quite reach a caramel stage but it did end up slightly syrupy.

The plain tofu on the plate was the dogs snack :-)

Strong coffee.

I did have a movie night planned for last night - but my friend was sick so it was postponed.

And I was left with what I had bought to bring to the shindig:

Baked sweet potato.

I had saved the braising liquid from the beef shank so I used that as the base of the soup.

I simmered the braising liquid and mashed the sweet potato and added it to the pan. I also added in a handful of frozen corn.

It didn't turn out very pretty - but it was delicious.

Sweet potato and corn soup.

I do have plans for today and they involve lots and lots of greens...

Lunch deconstructed

I decided in my current less than 100% state - making chicken soup from a whole chicken was probably overly ambitious.

I compromised and picked up chicken drumsticks and chicken breasts. 

The soup needs to simmer for hours so I got the soup started as soon as I got back.

Chicken, parsley, thyme and water go in the pot.

After it hit a roiling boil - I turned it down a simmer and dropped in one yellow onion (halved), two stalks of celery and two carrots.

Everyone in the pot!

I still had this in the fridge:

But I didn't feel like eating the wrapper - so it ended up looking like this...

Ahhh, now that looks much better :-)

I am off to babysit the soup!

Late lunch

A day filled with errands - yuk.

The whole day flies by and you feel like you accomplished nothing. I didn't get back for lunch until just now - 4:00pm.

So it was simple and fast.

Red leaf lettuce with chopped mushrooms, cucumber and celery. I tossed this with a bottled tamari sesame dressing. I put together a mix of coconut butter, peanut butter and soy sauce (only a small amount of each) rolled pieces of tofu in the mix and then sauteed them till brown. 

Pheww, time for a short break to put my feet up.

What's for dinner?

Since I was still nursing my poor injured finger - I kept things simple for dinner. The dogs had to make do with plain kibble.

I steamed up some broccoli.

Then I tossed mushrooms, garlic powder, basil, oregano with some olive oil and sauteed them till they browned. Next, I poured in some spaghetti sauce (from a jar) and added some cubed tofu. I let it cook down for a while and then the cooked spaghetti went in.

Fresh chopped parsley on top.

 

Once More With Feeling

Trying this blogging thing one more time. Hopefully this time I will be more disciplined about posting.

I made some bean/rice cakes for breakfast. I started off with a few key ingredients.

Firm tofu, refried beans, rice, basil, garlic powder,  and sage. Oops, I forgot to add the cooked brown rice in that picture but you get the idea. And the spice jar that I thoughtfully obscured from view is the powdered garlic :-)

I mushed everything together and in the end came up with this.

 I put a bit of extra salsa on top. I used one that has a smoky flavor (my preference) but any old salsa would do. I added some orange slices which were an amazing shade of red/orange. The version I made yesterday turned out better - but alas no photos of that - which included an egg and panko breadcrumbs - the flavor and texture was much better with that version.

The dogs were out of luck with this meal since my beasts + beans is a very bad and odoriferous combination.:-)