In Other News...

I no longer hold my old job of selling soap. I'm hoping to hear back soon on the prospect of another job selling different soap. Keep fingers crossed :)
And on other notes, the site I post on more these days is having some technical difficulties, so I'm going to post a few recipes on here that normally would have gone up on Busy Mommy first. And as another first on this site, I'm including a picture of the finished product. Because I finally had my camera handy and actually thought about it before finishing the meal I made for once. Enjoy :)

There are literally hundreds of ways to enjoy (yes, enjoy) eating tofu. This particular version is easy to make, tastes great and is a fantastic substitute for more traditional scrambled eggs and works equally well as breakfast or dinner. My version is based on bits and pieces of other recipes and a frozen version that I've eaten and liked over the years. If you're looking for an easy way to introduce tofu into your regular diet this is a great place to start.

My scrambled tofu tends to have a high proportion of vegetables incorporated compared to some recipes. I find it's an easy way to fit in an extra serving of vegetables (and who isn't trying to do that?) without having to resort to hiding them in anything. My favorite combination is the one I've given here, but do feel free to use this as a canvas to use whatever vegetables you have on hand. Grated carrots, frozen peas or broccoli, leftover sautéed leeks, zucchini, corn—they all work pretty well. The only vegetables I consider absolute musts when making scrambled tofu are greens and mushrooms. I'll use whatever mushrooms I have on hand, which is usually either sliced white buttons or rehydrated dried or fresh shiitakes. If you use dried mushrooms, be sure you've swished them well in their soaking water to remove any remaining sand. For greens I tend to use either fresh baby spinach straight out of the bag or a few handfuls finely chopped kale.

You can serve this scramble with toast, fruit and juice, soy milk (or regular milk) or coffee for a more traditional breakfast spread or use it to stuff a pita for an easy and portable pocket sandwich. It reheats well either in the microwave or on the stove (sprinkle in a little water if it's looking dry) and leftovers work great in breakfast burritos—either veggie style with some vegetarian sausage crumbles (or non-veg with regular sausage), cheese or soy cheese and salsa or even just wrapped on it's own. A one pound brick of regular tofu cooked like this should serve 3-4 depending on how many veggies you cram in and how hungry your crowd is.

Scrambled Tofu

Ingredients:

1 16oz package of firm or extra firm regular tofu, drained and pressed and cut into 1/3 inch dice*

Olive oil, canola oil or cooking spray

1 small to medium onion, chopped

2-3 cloves garlic, chopped

½ to 1 teaspoon turmeric

¼ teaspoon cumin

¼ teaspoon paprika

½ teaspoon dill weed (optional)

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 Tablespoons nutritional yeast (optional)**

1 or 2 cups fresh mushrooms, sliced OR about 2/3 cup (two good sized handfuls) dried shiitake mushrooms, rehydrated in 2 cups boiling water

2 big handfuls kale, rinsed and chopped (this is usually 8 or so good sized leaves for me, I don't usually measure it in cups)

1 medium tomato, diced

Salt and Pepper

Directions:

Dice your tofu and chop your vegetables before you start with anything else. When your ingredients are prepped, spray or lightly oil a heavy pan and heat up over medium heat (cast iron is best, non-stick is fine). Add the onions to the pan and cook until they are translucent and just starting to brown, then add the garlic and spices except dill, stirring to combine. Add the tofu to the pan and stir to coat with the onion and spice mixture. Add the soy sauce and nutritional yeast to the pan (if using) and stir, adding a quarter cup of the soaking water from your mushrooms or plain water to aid in the distribution of the yeast and to keep the whole from burning. Add water to the pan in small doses as necessary throughout the rest of cooking to keep the tofu from burning or sticking—this allows you to refrain from adding any additional oil and allows the tofu to soak up the spices more thoroughly. Add the kale to the pan and allow to cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring frequently to keep from sticking. If it's sticking a lot, lower the heat a bit. Add the dill if you're using it, taste for seasoning and add salt, pepper, soy sauce and/or turmeric to to your liking. Add tomatoes to the pan and heat through. Add a little more water if the mixture seems too dry for you, stir one more time and serve.

*A note on preparing tofu:

Normally pressing tofu can take a rather long time, and I'm not usually that patient in the morning. I've found that cutting the brick into 2-4 pieces, wrapping in paper towels and squeezing gently works just fine for getting enough water out to make this.

Dicing the tofu—this is me copying one of my preferred frozen versions. It's not entirely necessary, though it looks nice. If you're not in the mood to dice the brick, just cut it into large chunks and squish in your hand over the pan. The tofu will break up a bit during cooking, and the irregular lumps look more like scrambled eggs. Just break up any huge bits with the spatula or spoon as you go.

**A note on nutritional yeast:

This is a very common ingredient in many vegan recipes that gives a savory, almost cheese-like note to many dishes. It's easy to find in many vegan food websites, but is also available in many brick and mortar health food stores. I get mine from the bulk aisle of the organic food sections of my local Wegmans grocery store. If you can't get it, don't worry about it for this recipe—it's nice, but you don't absolutely need it. If you're interested in trying it, this might be a good time to hit up any vegan friends you have to get a little before you get stuck ordering a full pound of the stuff. I love it, but it can be an acquired taste. If you do end up with a good quantity of it and decide you're not a fan, try adding it to batches of chili, soups and even use it in the broth you cook crock pot roast beef in. It's a pretty common ingredient in dry soup mixes as well, so you can bump up the savory notes in onion dip or spinach dip with it as well. Or just feed everybody a batch of Vegan Mac & Cheese—someone's bound to like it.

A New Dawn, A New Day...

...A new "tuna" salad.
I really need to post a bit more often. Much has happened in the literal months since I actually posted anything, and many recipes are sitting on the back burner waiting for me to write them up. One of the new things is that my more mainstream types of recipes are likely going to be posted at Busy Mommy, a site run by one of my dear friends who has opted to take me on as a writer for the Cooking Mommy page. I'm quite happy with the arrangement so far and am hoping she is too :)

On to more usual topics, or in this case, more experimental. I'm working more and more towards being a full out vegan, having only occasional lapses with cheese and even less occasional meals with meat. As such I've been branching out again and playing with more random foods, which lead to today's new staple recipe. I've been looking for all sorts of easy foods to replace things I am used to making on a regular basis. Tempeh has been making many appearances, but takes more time to prepare than I tend to want to give it for something like lunch. I was browsing around through a lot of vegan recipes on all sorts of sites and cookbooks and came across several for vegan "tuna" and "chicken" salads--almost all with the quote marks. The ones that were chickpea based appealed to me because I always have chickpeas on hand and have yet to meet a chickpea recipe I didn't at least like enough to finish. Most of them were rather complicated or had fairly long ingredients lists, so I ditched them and made this version, which I've stripped down to its simplistic roots. You could flavor this with whatever you want, but I'm sticking with just the pickles and hot sauce for the moment. Even my mother, who has not taken well to most of the stuff I give her to taste of late, liked this one and wanted to finish it with some crackers, a preparation I think would go over nicely. I myself stuffed it into a sandwich with tomato slices and were I ok with cheese right now I think it would make a great base to a melt with a slice of cheddar.


Vegan Tuna (or Chicken) Salad
Makes enough for about 3-4 sandwiches

Ingredients:
-1 can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
-1/4 cup vegenaise (or mayonaise if you so prefer, I don't)
-1/2 kosher dill, small dice
-salt and pepper
-1 teaspoon hot sauce (optional)

Directions:
Mash the chickpeas with a spoon or fork until there are no whole peas left. Mix in the vegenaise and stir, mashing as needed, until combined and the texture of tuna salad. Stir in the pickle and salt and pepper to taste. Stir in the hot sauce if using. Serve with crackers, salad greens or in a sandwich.

Notes:
-You can add in whatever you happen to add in to tuna or chicken salad. My mom's version favors chopped onions and celery along with the pickles for both tuna and chicken salads, and she makes an easy pasta salad by mixing the tuna salad with cooked medium shells. I imagine this would work pretty well in that too, though the color would be different.
-This doesn't look vegetarian, so would make an easy sandwich to take along for lunch that no one will question. I for one am a little tired of people's continued interest in my lunch as the afternoon's entertainment. This doesn't look odd, even if you put it on salad greens.
-I like my egg/tuna/chicken/whatever salads a little on the dry side so as not to have them leak all over the place when trying to eat them. And because I don't really like the taste of straight mayonaise. So this recipe starts with a small amount of mayo/nayo, feel free to add a bit more if you like.