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!

lazy pizza

Sometimes you want some pizza, but you just don't want to order it, and you definitely do not have the energy or patience to make pizza dough; in enters Naan. Indian Life has one flavour of Naan that contains no dairy, so my friend Ayma and I snagged it and covered it with delicious toppings.

This pizza is covered with the following:

-crushed tomatoes
-sliced cremini mushrooms
-marinated artichokes
-kalamata olives
-fresh tomatoes
-crumbled tofu

The tofu was marinated in a mixture of garlic, lemon juice, white wine vinegar and dill.

We brushed the Naan with olive oil from the artichokes before putting on the toppings, slid it onto a baking sheet and then tossed it into an oven preheated to 350F for about 12 minutes.

Easiest pizza ever!

We also made a simple salad with ripped up red leaf lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and avocado. The dressing was made of juice from half a lemon, half a teaspoon of grainy mustard, several splashes of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and probs about half a teaspoon of maple syrup.

Delicious!

Salad!

Here's a quick salad that I made one evening for dinner. I often forget how easy it is to whip a delicious salad together, and they are so satisfying and delicious!!
YUM!!
Ingredients in this salad are as follows:
-red leaf lettuce, washed and ripped into pieces
-cherry tomatoes and avocado cut into chunks
-grated carrot
-canned black beans, rinsed
-sliced almonds, toasted (you can toast nuts in about 5 minutes on a tray in your toaster oven, set to 375F..... or also on the stove in a dry pan on medium-high heat)
-mushrooms and asparagus (I sliced these up and then just fried them in a pan until they were tender. I prooooobably doused them in balsamic vinegar once they were half-way done)

Toss everything together, and then all you need is a dressing!
My go to dressing is a mixture of equal parts white wine vinegar and extra virgin olive oil, with about half a lemon's worth of juice, half a teaspoon of grainy mustard, a teensy bit of agave nectar, and a dash of white truffle oil. It's SUPERB!

I know that white truffle oil is expensive, and a bit of a luxury item, but you need such a small amount to add lovely fragrant flavour to a dish. It's meant to be used as a finishing oil (you put it on for flavour once the dish is fully prepared; it's not meant to be used during the actual cooking process), so you basically just need a dash. It makes an excellent addition to salads, or gives a special je ne sais quoi to soups (it's AMAZING on white bean soups!)

Oh yeah, here's the salad!