Tofu Scramble and ramblings

My dinner was really good. As a 'good ole boy', hubby wanted to have fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy--yuck! So I contributed steamed carrots and cauliflower and made myself a Tofu Scramble. I have seen them all over the blogs and seen recipes that all look easy, so I just put it together, seasoned it how I liked and served it over spinach. Here is my recipe:
Curry Tofu Scramble
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1/3 of a package of extra firm silken tofu-mashed
1/2 of a sweet potato spiral sliced
curry powder
ginger
turmeric
salt
pepper
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I mushed up the tofu, spiral sliced the sweet potato, added the curry, ginger, and turmeric. I then sauteed in a little bit of coconut oil and added a bit of salt and pepper.
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Serve over spinach leaves.
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I thought it was really good. I think I will definitely do this again. I had leftover chowder for both breakfast and lunch. I got thinking about the chowder (the recipe is on yesterday's post)--the recipe originally came from a lady at my mom's church when I was a kid. Then, it was made with butter, cream and clams and had no corn, garlic, or cabbage.
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When I got married, I started making it occasionally with milk (instead of cream), sometimes bacon or no meat (instead of clams), and margarine (instead of butter). Then I got a recipe for col cannon--basically a potato and cabbage soup--and liked it so well that I started adding the cabbage. I started adding corn when hubby raved over some corn chowder he had.
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Now I've veganized it and it's the best ever. Hubby even likes it!
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Speaking of hubby, I sometimes get a little frustrated about my family. I read VeganDad's blog and his family likes the way they eat. Mine hates my food for the most part. The problem, in large part, is that hubby is a old farm boy and thinks of meals of as "meat and potatoes"--fried is better. That is the way I ate for the first 23 years of our marriage and that is what made me 276 pounds of fat, unhealthy misery.
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Now that I've changed and feel so much better, I'd really like to get the family to change. The problem is that kids look to whichever parent is to their liking at the moment. Hubby used to smoke and then he had a bloody nose that wouldn't stop--he ended up having to have surgery and he really thought he was going to die. The doc gave him a lecture about how it probably wouldn't have happened if he wasn't a smoker. That scared him out of smoking.
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I'd rather it not have to be a heart attack that scares him into getting healthy. To often people don't get a second chance to get healthy after one of those. He's overweight, pretty lazy, and resists changes to his diet. He's teaching daughter to be just like him.
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On a better note, after spending all that time at the Y exercising yesterday, the kids wanted to go back again today. The Y is closed on Sunday so instead they did over an hour on Wii fit and Wii sport. So they did get moving. That's really good.
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Well, I'm off.
Ciao for now.

Lunchtime on Wednesday

My conference was pretty good. I went up on Monday (a 2 hour drive) and had dinner with a friend. We went to a place called Mai Thai--we shared edamame, I had a green curry with Tofu, and for dessert we shared black rice with coconut creme. I was pretty impressed with the waitress--I asked for the vegan red curry and she came back to tell me that the chef couldn't do the red curry completely vegan tonight, but he could do the green. Would I like to have the green or could she help me find something else? It would have been so easy for her to just bring me the red curry--I'd have never known there was meat broth in the sauce--but she took the time to let me know and offered me alternatives. It was very good and the service gets excellent marks as well.

At the motel, I had some fruit and plain oatmeal off of their buffet for breakfast and a banana for a snack. For lunch, I had requested a vegan alternative--everyone else got a pasta buffet; I got a great salad made up of all kinds of raw vegetables cut into really tiny squares over a bed of shredded leaf lettuce served in a cabbage bowl. It had a really light vinaigrette over it. I think I definitely got the better end of the deal over the other participants. For an afternoon snack, I had raw sunflower seeds (out of my purse) and an apple.

Then I had to drive home. I had rain the whole way--I HATE DRIVING IN BAD WEATHER! When I got home, I had a piece of whole wheat bread with a little almond butter and jelly on it. I had to have something--I was starving and the kids were just leaving for karate so we wouldn't be able to have dinner for another hour and a half!

For dinner we had stir-fried teriyaki veggies and sauteed teriyaki marinated tofu (hubby and daughter had hot dogs and cottage cheese instead of the tofu).

My veggies are so easy. Here's what I do:

Cut up into like sized pieces whatever veggies you have in the house (we had zucchini, onion, carrot, yellow bell pepper, celery).
Put a little oil in the wok and heat (I use soybean oil).
When the oil is hot, put the veggie in and toss for a few minutes over the heat.
Pour in 1/2 cup of teriyaki sauce (I use kikoman--just like the soy sauce but teriyaki), toss the veggies some more, and turn down heat.
continue cooking until the veggies are as done as you'd like them. (I like them crisp, but hubby likes them pretty much well done so I do them somewhere in between for us).

tofu:
drain, press, and marinate extra firm tofu (I marinated in a bit of veggie broth and teriyaki sauce for about 20 minutes).
lightly oil small fry pay and fry tofu on both sides (about 3 minutes per side or just until lightly brown.

My son really liked the tofu. And by the way, I buy a block of the extra firm tofu and cut it into 3 steaks. They are a little fatter that way, but that's how I like them.

I was so tired last night, I fell into bed as soon as we got the kids in bed. A 2-hour drive, sleeping in a hotel bed, then an all day class, then a 2-hour drive in the rain had taken their toll on me.

Well, I'm back to work, I had a sandwich--seitan with vaganaise and spinach on whole wheat--and now I'm ready to work again.

Ciao for now.