Cheatin' Curry Tofu

This is one of my favorite curry dishes that I make a couple of times a year, but I can't take full credit for it. I'm cheatin' with a box! However, I can't help myself because the end product is this saucy gravy concoction that I just love. The spice comes in three heat levels, and when I cook for the whole family, I use mild. I kick it up to medium or hot, if it's just going to be my husband and me. But, I'm well aware that anything beyond mild is going to send my uber-masculine husband into a hiccup fit. So, I just sit back and chuckle at him when that happens. You gotta give me a break, though - the man hiccups from eating slightly spicy mustard! The spice is called Golden Curry and is made by S&B. I hope you like it, too.

Cheatin' Curry Tofu

It looks like this in the beginning, and you break it into individual bars.

The end result, with a salad on the side.

Cheatin' Curry Tofu

Ingredients:

Brown rice
1 Tbs. canola oil
2 pkgs. extra-firm tofu, drained, cut into triangles

1 and 1/2 cups of veggies - we used:
2 medium zucchinis, sliced diagonally
2 celery stalks, sliced diagonally

1 green onion, sliced diagonally

1 pkg. S&B Golden Curry Sauce Mix with heat of your choice

2 and 1/2 cups of water

Directions:

Cook brown rice according to package directions. While rice is cooking, heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the tofu, and cook until partially browned, about 20 minutes over medium high heat. Stir occasionally. Add the veggies, and turn the heat down to medium. Cook for another ten minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the water and bring to a boil. Break up the big bar into its smaller bars and add to the sauce. Turn the heat down to medium low, and stir constantly until the bars are dissolved. This will thicken up into a wonderful curry gravy. Serve the tofu mixture over the brown rice. A salad on the side rounds out the meal. Feeds five hungry vegans.

Caprese Salad and a bit o' other info - come and see!

This is a super simple salad that I like to make for my family. It's quick and easy and tastes great too! Hope you like it.

Also, just to give you a quick update on a couple of things: When my husband and I got back from our anniversary a few weeks ago, we started a "food plan" for chubby vegans, erk. Yes, I may like my food a bit too much. Thankfully, this is a perfect post to display a salad recipe! Anyhow, I'm incorporating a recipe of mine about once a week for my family to practice portion control with my recipes, and also to have something to blog about. :-) So, that's why I've been coming on weekly, instead of every three days. I hope you'll be patient with me during this time. When I'm fit and trim and where I want to be, I'll have more posts. If you're curious about the food plan, it's put out by http://www.vegfamily.com/ (an online magazine), and the website is http://www.veganweighdown.com/. I got lucky and am one of the testers, so I didn't have to pay anything, and I give feedback on recipes and the website. I don't know what membership costs.

Secondly, I'm going to be a tester for a blogger who just got a cookbook contract - yay! Kathy over at http://healthyslowcooking.wordpress.com/ has got just three months to come up with 150 recipes. I can't post her recipes on my blog, but I have permission to publicize her, like I'm doing now. How does this fit in with my food plan? Well, for the next couple of months, I'm going to have juggle both things and work on portion control. It doesn't seem like her recipes will be giving me problems with calorie-overload. So, all in all, it seems like my own cooking is sliding to the "back burner" (get it?), but I will post at least once a week. Thanks for understanding!

Now for the salad! Isn't it a purty picture?

Caprese Salad

Ingredients:

4 tomatoes, cut into wedges
Approximately 5 to 6 oz. vegan mozzarella cheese, cubed small
1/4 cup packed fresh basil leaves, cut into ribbons (directions below)
3 Tbs. olive oil
1 Tbs. balsamic vinegar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper

Directions:

To cut fresh basil leaves into ribbons, simply stack the leaves on top of each other, five or six at a time, roll up and cut into thin strips. You'll have nice thin ribbons of fresh basil - yum. Toss these with the rest of the ingredients into a medium bowl and chill for at least an hour. Bring out and toss again before serving. Feeds five hungry vegans.

Garlicky Roasted Red Pepper Hummus

I've been fiddling with this recipe for years to keep trying to make what I think is a really good hummus. This is probably going to be my final product for quite a while. Hummus is so versatile: you can use it as a dip or as a sandwich spread. And, it's healthy and tasty to boot! Hope you like this version as much as I do.

Garlicky Roasted Red Pepper Hummus

As a dip with fresh garden picked radishes, whole wheat pita chips, baby carrots, zucchini and celery. Yummy!

As a sandwich spread for a nice lunch or an easy dinner with chips and one of my mom's homemade pickles, of course!

Garlicky Roasted Red Pepper Hummus

Ingredients:

1 - 15oz. can of garbanzo beans, drained
1 Tbs. tahini
1 and 1/2 Tbs. lemon juice
1 and 1/2 Tbs. olive oil
1/2 cup roasted red bell peppers - I usually buy jarred peppers, unless I'm taking the time to roast them myself. A little liquid that clings to the peppers is all right.
4 or 5 cloves of garlic, chopped
1/4 tsp. of salt

Directions:

Simply pour all the ingredients into a food processor (I hope you have one) and blend until it is a nice, smooth consistency. I like my hummus pretty smooth, so it may take a minute or more to achieve that. (If you don't have a food processor, soften the garbanzo beans and garlic by cooking them in water for a few minutes, then drain. Try mashing with a potato masher.) Makes a fantastic dip or sandwich spread. Feeds five hungry vegans.

Monterey Bay Trip and Food - May, 2010

Beautiful Monterey Bay. My husband and I spent several days there last week celebrating fifteen years of completely blissful matrimony! I took pictures of the beauty we saw, the things we visited, and of course, the food. Hopefully, if you ever visit the area, this will give you a few ideas of where you can enjoy a good vegan meal.

Some of the most beautiful ocean landscape in the world.

Because we got in late on the night we arrived, we didn't go out to dinner, so this is actually our anniversary dinner! Leftovers from lunch at a Sacramento-based Chinese restaurant, and some snacks I brought. Luckily, I'm an easy-going gal.

This was our basic continental breakfast that we had each morning, courtesy of the Magic Carpet Lodge in Seaside.

I thought these cones on this tree looked interesting. Monterey Bay has some very unique indigenous plants that you will continue to see below.

After breakfast, we visited the Presidio Museum. My husband went to the Defense Language Institute to study Russian, so we had to go there and visit the museum. That's G standing on the far left.

A serene picture of Monterey Harbor.

The back view of Cannery Row, made famous by John Steinbeck.

The souvenirs we bought for the little blessings. We actually bought them the next day, but I messed up with blogger. The coconut pig bank is for my oldest daughter who is crazy about pigs. The shell trinket box is for my younger daughter who loves these types of things. The soccer ball is for my little guy who loves to watch his sisters play soccer.

The China Garden in Pacific Grove is where we had lunch on our first full day. The towns here are only five minutes apart, so it's easy to jump from one to another.

This is my husband's starter salad partially eaten before I remembered to take a shot. Mine is even more diminished. It had a subtle sesame dressing.

I thought we were ordering family style, but the meals came as individual entrees. I scored with my tofu vegetable delight.

This was my husband's scezhuan tofu. Nice guy that he is, he actually took a shot of his food for me. Blogging confounds him, and doing anything but eating during a meal confounds him more. So, this was a big deal.

After lunch we took a long drive to look at the beautiful coast. Here's Mr. Babealicious checking out the sights, while I'm checking him out. I like his, er, back...ahem.

Deer are plentiful here and roam freely. Here's a mama with two fawns grazing at some beachfront homes.

Here's a memorial for John Denver who crashed his plane a few feet from here in the water.

Cute purple flowers.

We stopped off at Whole Foods to get dessert for later on, but G decided that he had to have his German chocolate cake immediately. He wouldn't even let me open up the package to get a picture - not enough time, not enough time!

Here's my chocolate mousse cake poised on a rock. Well, you didn't expect me to watch him eat cake right in front of me, did you? But, I saved about half of it, which I ate the next morning.

Don't you think this rock looks like a big manatee laying down on its side?

Some of those things that look like large pebbles are actually hermit crabs. There are tons of tide pools here that we love to walk around. G saw a big hermit crab scurry under a rock before I could snap a picture.

Here's my rock in front of a rock. He's glad to show the world his Raider devotion. He only wears black and black or black and gray for that reason. Seriously.

The water was cooooold on my toes!

We had dinner at Cafe Lumiere in Monterey.

This is my portabello panini with a side of a brothy salad that was absolutely delicious. The server called it a salad, but it could pass as a cold, chunky soup, perfectly seasoned. The panini was very good too.

Here is my surprisingly agreeable husband opening his grilled veggie panini for all of you to gaze upon. He had the same side salad. He was very impressed with his sandwich and salad, as well.

They offered two vegan desserts, so we took them both. I had a chocolate peanut butter cup, that was only a dollar! And he had his first of several oatmeal, cranberry, chocolate chip cookies. We had to go back for more and bring some back for the kids.

The next day we headed to the beach - you have to do that every day, you know. Here's a crazy looking bush that caught my attention. There's tons of these down by the rocks.

A stunning field of purple. People have this a lot on their front yards instead of grass, especially down by the water. This was giving me ideas about my own lawn.

We finally went to the Thomas Kinkade National Archive. I say finally because at our last trip down here, I really wanted to go, but it didn't fit in with the family's schedule. Yeah. So, this time, we were going!

Here's a shot of just one of Kinkade's pieces inside. Justin, the director, was very friendly and helpful.

We stopped for lunch at Paprika Cafe in Monterey run by a very nice man named Christophe. (That's right, no "r" - it's not a typo.)

I took a picture of our happy hands there. My husband doesn't like to wear any jewelry, but he wore his ring for the whole trip. Aw.

We were served an amazing lunch, and we both had the same thing. We had tabouli, hummus, dolma, spinach salad, falafels, baba ganoush, and fresh pitas. It was unbelievably good. He also doesn't have a fryer in his restaurant, so Christophe baked the falafels. Very tasty.

Some of Christophe's homemade baklava. G especially liked them because they weren't sticky. Don't even try to get him sticky - watch out!

Finally the front of Cannery Row. This is really where I bought the children their treats. I don't know why, but I love this place.

We thought about renting bikes, but then we took another walk instead, where G snapped this gorgeous flower. Yes, G did it! For my blog! You heard me!

Here was a funny sight. This is actually a fake screen meant to look as if a dog is sitting there. It's not real at all. I guess it's the Monterey single woman's home security system. I also saw a road sign that had a picture of a deer with a red nose. I guess Rudolph is running around in Monterey now.

We went to D'Anna Thai Kitchen in Marina for dinner where Paul waited on us and was very helpful and sociable.

We started with their fresh rolls with peanut sauce. These were very tasty.

This is G's green curry. He said he really liked it, and he actually asked if I wanted a taste so I could remark about it on my blog. Who is this guy? By the way, I did taste, and it was delicious with a kick.

I ordered the coconut soup, which was sweet and very different from G's green curry. They couldn't have been more different, but they were equally satisfying.

Our dessert was sticky rice with fresh mango topped with coconut sauce. I've never had this before, and I was surprised by its sweetness and how good it tasted. Excellent.

We caught a late movie at a theatre house that shows independent films. That's G walking up the steps. The rooms were so small, they only held four full row of chairs, about 36 total.

Before breakfast on our last day, we visited the beach once again and made friends with gulls, like we always do. There's a brave guy coming close to G's chip. The only regular animal friends that we didn't see this time were the sea lions, which we thought was strange.

Back to Cafe Lumiere for their Sunday brunch. We both had breakfast burritos, which were filled with tofu scramble and soyrizo. We also had roasted potatoes (mine is smothered already with hot sauce) and very fresh fruit. I don't drink coffee, but G said all the coffee he drank on the trip was excellent. I ordered an apple juice, and they gave me probably sixteen ounces for two dollars! Overall, we were both very impressed with all the meals we had on this trip. We really lucked out. I will keep you posted when we leave town and what we eat on trips. You can use this as a resource for when you visit those places.

I leave you with those hungry gulls staring at you.

I love you, G! Happy 15!