Super awesome food

=]

Yeah, tooting my own horn there, but what can I say -- it was delish!

Check this out: barbecue tofu, cheezy spinach grits, and slaw! Yumm!

Barbecue tofu

Close-up, mmmmm...

Cut up tofu into 1/2 in cubes and bake them in the oven at 350F for 15-20min. After that, roll them in some oil and flour/salt mixture and saute on the stove for a couple of minutes, and then add your choice of bbq sauce. I always make mine from just about scratch, but any will do. I mix tomato sauce with some ground garlic and onion, pepper, celery salt, cloves, chili powder, some apple cider vinegar, tamarind extract, tamari, paprika, cayenne pepper, mustard powder, any kind of sweetener, and a little bit of hot sauce. Cook on the stove till barbecue-brown.  =]

For grits, boil water and salt, add hominy and cook for several minutes. Just before done, add vegan cheese (I used Teese Mozzarella vegan cheese) and as much frozen spinach as you'd like; cook until the cheese melts and DONE!

The slaw was shredded broccoli, red cabbage and carrot with vegan slaw dressing I adopted from Love Veggies and Yoga. Just use any vegan mayo (Spectrum canola oil one for me) and vinegar (I used the apple cider one) in the 1/3 - 1/2 of the mayo amount and I also added some hot sauce, to taste. I love me some hot sauce!!

It was a marvelous meal! I liked it so much I had it again the next day, but I was out of broccoli slaw so I just used my dressing on a regular ol' salad of baby greens and baby carrots.

For dessert, I made a no-bake kumquat pie. It was...interesting. In fact, it still is since I haven't finished it yet. I didn't fall in love with it mostly because of a really strong soy taste. The recipe calls for whipped cream, sweetened condensed milk and kumquat puree. I pureed the fruit in a blender with no problems, and I made a coconut whipped cream lickety-split, but the third ingredient was the troublesome one.

I have some powdered soy milk, and I'm not crazy about the taste of it, and you can only imagine how the taste was intensified when I had to use three time as much to make it condensed.  =\ Blegh. The rest of the stuff in the pie, including the whole wheat crust help the taste somewhat, but this is one recipe I won't be making again until I find another way of condensing vegan milk.

I keep the pie in the freezer.

The crust was pretty yummy:

Here's pictures of the wonderful coconut whipped cream as I was making it (and, ahem! eating it).

You can keep it in the fridge for AT LEAST a couple of days. HA! As if it's ever lasted that long around here.

Well, that's it for me, I will leave you with a picture of the best-tasting turd-shaped item ever (educated guess):

TAMARIND!!! Get it if you can find it.