a vegan food blog that will be composed of recipes, straight up food porn, nutritional info and general food talk. occasionally, it will also be mingled with bits and pieces from my life outside of food which might include bicycles, art and my cat.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

mashed potatoes! tofu! salad!

I have been trying to cut down on the soy products lately, so have been keeping tofu intake to a minimum. This is partly because I don't think that eating too much of any one thing is terribly good for you, and partly because a lot of soy is grown in huge monoculture crops. Soy is kind of like corn in a lot of ways... it's become ubiquitous...
and I'm not sure how I feel about that.
On that note... this is the first meal that I've made using tofu in weeks!
And it was delicious!

The tofu was marinated in (roughly) the following:
- 3 tablespoons of HP Sauce
- about two dashes of Hickory liquid smoke
- 3 tablespoons of red wine vinegar
- 1 teaspoon of grainy mustard
- 1 tablespoon of maple syrup
- some water to make it more liquidy and marinadey

If there was anything else in the marinade, I don't remember what it was. Womps.
I cleaned and quartered some mushrooms before tossing them in a pan and cooking until they started to release their water. I then threw in the chunks of tofu with their marinade and basically just let this simmer until all of the water had cooked off.
The tofu was sweet and smokey and totally delicious. YUM!

Mashed potatoes!! I cooked a giant pot of mashed potatoes, and added in a parsnip for a bit of kick. While the potatoes were cooking, I wilted a bunch of spinach in a pan, and chopped up some basil.
Once the potatoes were done cooking I began the mashing process.
I added the following into the potato/parsnip mash:
- olive oil and unsweetened original almond milk (I start off by just adding a splash of each, and then slowly add more until the potatoes reach the desired texture)
- the wilted spinach
- a handful of chopped up basil
- fresh garlic, minced, to taste (I add A LOT)
- 1 tablespoon of light miso paste
- several pinches of tarragon
- lots of fresh ground pepper
- Alder smoked salt, to taste

Finally, the salad... pretty basic and classic, the salad was made of chopped up cherry tomatoes, red leaf lettuce, cucumber and pea shoots. I also shredded in some carrot. The dressing was a favourite of my friend Kate-lynn's: pretty much equal parts olive oil, balsamic vinegar and sesame oil. DELICIOUS!!

And here's the most important part! The photo!
OM NOM NOM!!



I LOVE FOOD SO MUCH!
VEGETABLES! HURRAY!