Thursday

Discovery of the day: Making peace with tofu stir fry

I had a hankering for tofu stir fry last night (plus I had a 1/2 lb of tofu that had to be used), but cooking brown rice takes almost an hour and I didn't want to be feed my son at 7:30 at night. And the last one I made was... underwhelming. I needed to find something else to do to the tofu, and I needed a different sauce.

I remembered that I had soba noodles, and had used that in a recipe before as the base instead of rice. In that same recipe, the tofu was drained, patted dry, and fried by itself until brown. Then it was set aside while the rest of the stuff was cooked. The tofu was used as a "topping", which kept it from soggy-fying in the skillet.

That'll work! I pulled a couple of partial bags of frozen stir-fry veggies out of the freezer, started draining my 1/2 lb of tofu, got the soba on to boil, and went to work.

The veggies got thawed in the m-wave. The tofu was cut into little cubes, tossed in a blend of soy sauce and mirin (approx 3:2 ratio), patted dry, then fried and set aside on paper towels. Then the veggies got quickly stir-fried in the rest of the soy-mirin sauce, along with garlic and ginger. The soba got... boiled.

In less than 45 mins I had dinner on the table and it was ok; better than last time anyway. I thought the sauce came out good but it wasn't quite up to my son's standards. Next time I'll marinate the tofu in teriyaki sauce and use that to season the veggies. He likes teriyaki -- it's a fast-food staple in these parts. I might bake the tofu ahead of time, if I think of it.

In a couple of hours I head out for my trip. No signs of the cold... yet. I'm kinda nervous about the whole food thing, but I have a few pieces fruit with me to get me through the evening. After that, we'll just have to wing it!