Wednesday, April 20, 2011

My New Friend

Hello Tofu, nice to make your acquaintance. Will you please come into my home, make yourself comfortable in the refrigerator, but stay far away from my husband; he doesn't want your kind around here.

Tofu is my new friend. We found each other right between the milk and the eggs. Hidden there is, what I can only refer to as the "other" section. There are all kinds of freaky meat substitutes, "chicken" nuggets, spicy Italian "sausage," and meatless "burgers." To me, a substance that has no shape, consistency, smell, or taste that comes from nature, is probably not meant to be eaten. Even rotten vegetables are going through a natural decomposition process. But, I want to be open-minded, and soy is a plant, therefore I will not discriminate. So I brought my square, white, squishy friend home for a trial visit.

As it turns out, tofu is a very agreeable substance. I made Tofu Curry (with chicken on the side for Greg) and after two tries I got a pretty great result. Unfortunately, my friend Amanda was the recipient of try #1, with which I used "firm" tofu and  bit too much curry sauce. Try #2 turned out a bit better because I used "extra firm," which has a more meat-like consistency.

I also experimented with a dessert, which turned out to be a fantastic idea. I started out with putting the tofu in the food processor, and mashing the crap out of it. Then I added some baking chocolate, cocoa, sugar, and water. I mixed and mashed this until it was creamy and whipped. Then I chilled it overnight. The consistency was perfect! It was so chocolatey. No one would ever know that I used tofu! Here are some pictures!













Saturday, April 16, 2011

Lifestyle Change

I'm back to my old blogging self after a short hiatus. After some thinking, we've decided to eat healthier. Seriously. It's not a phase, it's a lifestyle change. So that's that. 



(God I want to devour an entire chocolate cake so freaking bad.)


Until my body adjusts I'll have to fake it till I make it. Here are some "healthy" meals I've tried out recently. 



Grilled Chicken Salad
One of the healthy choices that we're making is cutting down on salt and sugar. Therefore, I marinated the chicken in lemon juice and freshly round pepper to give it some punch. The salad is lightly dressed and has some crumbles of feta cheese on top.




Turkey Burgers
 I'll be honest, for someone who loves burgers, you have to be a flavor master to make lean ground turkey taste as good as a juicy beef burger. The ones in this picture were okay, but in the next batch I made, I used an egg white and a tablespoon of bread crumbs in the meat, which made it less dense. This made the burgers seem way jucier. I also made them much thinner, so they didn't need to cook as long and the meat didn't dry out as much. See? I'm learning.



Shrimp Skewers

This has been the most tasty meal yet. These shrimp were wild caught, not farm raised and tasted so fresh and delicious. I just skewered the shrimp, sweet yellow onion chunks, and pineapple chunks and grilled them on the Forman for about 3 minutes on each side. After, I drizzled about 1/4  teaspoon of honey down the skewer. Yum! We had this with a salad on the side. It was so good, I am making it again this week.

Thanks for reading my thoughts about healthier food!