SPICY PEANUT TOFU SANDWICH!! This was absolutely delicious. I love several things when it comes to food. Spice and peanut butter. I also found this recipe online and will link if I find it again. This was a bit more difficult than the hippie loaf for me, but it was still simple. I added extra pb because that's what I do and we used ciabatta rolls. The rest father recipe I followed except daikon because I have no clue what it is!
This is a good recipe for people that think they hate tofu and don't understand all the possibilities of it.
We had with baked beans and a salad on the side but potato salad seems like it'd r delicious!!
The best part about summer is having time to do things like making 3 hippie loafs to freeze. One quickly became supper!
It's strange, I never was a fan of meat loaf as a kid, maybe it was the huge chunks of onions, but I love finding different load recipes.
This one I found online and and is called Lentil Oat Loaf (I'll try to link later)
Mixing was easy and fast. I ignored onions as usual, added extra mushrooms and tomatoes. We made one with ketchup at bottom and top and two with BBQ sauce
Here is a real conundrum for us.. we like to eat organic, we like to eat healthy.. we like to eat companies that are NON-GMO certified and that obviously care about the environment and the people on it, some of these companies we've recently found out are owned by "parent companies" who spent millions of dollars to down Prop 37.
What is prop 37? Quickly, it's the bill on the last California ballot basically called the California Right to Know GMO labelling initiative. Those pesky citizens in California think it's their right to know what is being put in their food that they put into their bodies! The nerve! Naturally (means nothing on a food label), these large companies don't want people to know about their GMOs because it might cut their profit and they claim 0 studies show that GMOs are harmful to humans. Correlation not causality they sing daily.
Anyway..
According to the Organic Consumers Association some of our ex-favorite brands like: Alexia, Bear Naked, Cascadian Farm, Hunt's Organic, Kashi, Larabar, Muir Glen, Naked Juice, Odwalla, RW Knudsen and Silk are all owned by companies that spent over 250k alone to defeat prop 37.
That list is particularly heartbreaking to me because Cascadian Farm, Larabar, Muir Glen and even Odwalla had been solid purchases for us. RW Knudsen made a spritzer that we enjoyed and Silk made Kayla's favorite type of almond milk. Instead, we're going to have to look elsewhere.
We took the time to write to some of the companies on their facebook walls, and I think they must have expected some sort of backlash because they were very prepared and professional in their responses. Some of the companies are still going through NON-GMO certification even with their parent company spending hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars fighting Prop 37.
It's disheartening to have to stop purchasing from a company because of a choice their parent company makes. We don't have to stop and I get that.. but if we continue to support the smaller company in the end it helps their parent company. It gives them more $, it gives them benefits, it gives them power. That's the last thing I want.. for several food companies to dominate the market for profit only and not consider the environment or their consumers. That's the biggest shame we can make to ourselves and our future.
If you'd like to learn more about prop 37 please click here.
P.S. Monsanto spent the most vs. prop 37 (shocking) at over $8 million. So much for those commercials they pump out about caring about people.
This 11-year old serves Monsanto. You have 5 minutes and care about something? Check it out.
You know what that is? Just some tempeh bacon getting oiled up! Tempeh bacon is one of my favorite foods and I think one of Will's too. Basically, you take some tempeh and put a bunch of ingredients with it. I forget what all goes in it: garlic, soy sauce, liquid smoke, tomato paste, maybe some spices.. but I'll tell you this.. to make it taste real delicious you need to put about 2x the liquid smoke. That's my favorite part of this tasty delectable! Anyway, mix the random ingredients together and marinate the tempeh in it for 30+ minutes. Then you toss it into an oiled pan and let it brown/blacken a little bit. The crusty stuff is good.. trust me. Don't be weak and take out the bacon too early. Just don't.
When you make some tempeh bacon you have to have something with it.. in this case it was tofu scramble, another solid breakfast. Drain the tofu and press it. Add a ton of nooch (more than any recipe calls for) turmeric, oregano, basil, and that sounds good. From there you cook the tofu a bit and add a ton of veggies. Tomatoes, kalamatta olives, and spinach are favorites here.. occasionally mushrooms and cilantro make their way into the scramble. I wouldn't object to carrots, potatoes, or most veggies. Anyway, you let it brown and the veggies cook down and then you're good to go. Again, scrape the bottom of the pan.. the crusty stuff is the best part of the entire scramble!
And there you have it.. tofu scramble, tempeh bacon, and some cut up potatoes for breakfast.. or breakfast for lunch.. or breakfast for dinner. Will is clearly excited.. you should be too!
I love seitan even though I don't really know how to say it yet, in fact, it was one of the first vegan "meals" that I came up with. It was super intense; I bought some seitan from Westsoy (I believe) and dumped it in a pan with BBQ sauce. Honestly, that was the first meal I came up with.
Now? No more store buying seitan.. and why would we when it is SO easy to make. The easiest that I've found, for a non-chef like me, is the one in Robin Roberston's Quick Fix Vegan. You start off with the same few simple directions, and then choose one of three ways to finish the seitan; my choice is always the slow cooker. I'm not sure why, but that's what I like to do.
As you can see above it worked out fairly well and looks like real meat in this picture (kinda disturbing) but super delicious. I think we ended up with about two pounds of it, so some is now in the freezer and this brain.. errrrrr... piece ended up in a roast with mashed potatoes, veggies and some crazy delicious gravy (also from Quick Fix Vegan) sans the onions.. those are the decisions that you can make when you're the chef.
This took a lot longer to make than that BBQ seitan I made years ago.. ANYTHING with this seitan, however, was and will be better.
A lot of people wonder what I eat when I have to eat quickly or don't feel like cooking.. well, there are a lot of things that I consume that fits that criteria: oatmeal, cereal, tofurky brats, chocolate chips, peanut butter toast, bagel sandwiches, pasta and sauce, Chiptole, Qdoba, Jimmy John's, Trader Joe's new Meatless Meatballs or Chickenless Tenders, anything every from Gardein (amazing).. but my favorite is the simple salad.
Salads honestly take like 2 minutes to make (about the time it takes you to chop up some carrots and tomatoes).. That's it. My favorite quick salad?
The recipe goes a little something like this:
Bunch of spinach (preferably)
some tomatoes sliced up (usually grape and organic, of course)
carrots cut into little circles* (organic.. we buy these from Woodman's out of season, 5lbs is $3ish)
sunflower seeds (adds some crunch and a tad bit of salt)
raisins
Goddess dressing from Trader Joe's although I have stumbled upon a new favorite Spicy Peanut Vinaigrette.
*Note: I am not a real cook nor will I ever be one, I don't know the cooking terms only the layman's version.
The end is a masterpiece of color with surprising health benefits from a super food (spinach) to healthy fat (sunflower seeds), something to corrupt our body (dressing), and a bunch in between. If you don't have spinach/lettuce (real, not iceberg), tomatoes and carrots.. then get some. They can be used in so many different ways and add nutrition into every meal!
OG Deuce Lutui, TE Tony Gonzalez, RB Arian Foster.. what do these 3 NFL players have in common? They're vegan... ya, they don't eat the whole meat and potatoes routine. They don't down fish, turkey, chicken or other "lean" meats full of protein that "you can't get elsewhere."
There is a whole stigma about vegans that I've encountered and heard, sadly since choosing that lifestyle a few years ago.. "They're uppity." "They think they're special" "They think they can change the world." "They don't understand or care about the economy and farmers." "What are they going to do with all those cows, just let them loose?" And the one that Arian Foster tweeted several times about.. "Where do you get your protein?"
It's sickening the lack of knowledge that people have about food (thanks meat and dairy boards and the USDA!) I really wish I could find the full ESPN clip of Hugh Douglas and Stephen A. Smith trying to pretend they knew ANYTHING about being vegan.. I still chuckle about it on occasion.
Just watch and chuckle. Adrian Foster's season? 351 carries. 1424 yards. 15 TDs. 6th most rushing yards and led the league in rushing TDs.. most of which were, you know.. down inside the 5 yard line where you need power and strength to get to the end zone.
Tony Gonzalez? You may have heard of him.. he's the ALL TIME NFL leader in catches, yards, and TDs.. and he was pretty much unstoppable on 3rd down today vs. the Seattle Seahawks (my wish to win the NFL Title this season).. here is a solid (but old) article from the Wall Street Journal about Tony's decision. By the way, Tony will probably be retiring at season's end.. yet, he had 93 catches for 930 yards and 8 TDs this season.. good for 26th most catches in the entire league and 3rd most amongst TEs!
And ol' Deuce Lutui started 8 games at guard for the Titans this year.. Here is an NFL.com article about comments that Deuce made.
But you know what? Vegans can't be strong.. vegans can't play a man sport like football.. if they can't do these things certainly they can't be boxers or UFC/MMA fighters.. right?
I dunno.. step into the cage with Mac Danzig and see how it works out for you.
