appleORANGEpeach

Sweet n’ Sour Tofu

Posted on August 22, 2012

Hello lovelies! I have big news

I got a new job! While I still am working at A&W part time (partly because I need the money right now and partly because I felt guilty screwing them over), it feels good to have replaced it as my full-time place of employment. It’s a little bit hypocritical for a Vegan to work at a restaurant that doesn’t really even have Vegan options. I’ve been working there one day a week — my new job is at a call center. I still have awhile left of training but it’s going well and I’m feeling super positive about it.

My bicycle ride to my new job takes an hour each way and that feels amazing. I’m used to biking to work, but the 15 minutes it takes me to get to A&W is hardly a workout.

As such, I have substantially adjusted my eating habits. I bring a big lunch every day and eat a big dinner every evening. I don’t really eat breakfast but I bring a big bottle of chocolate soy milk that I sip on until first break. (it’s something like 25-30 oz.) Oh man, getting 3 breaks is an awesome change from what I’m used to (one 30 minute break)! I don’t really need 3 breaks, especially in training, but it does give me a chance to fill up my bottle with water at first break (I’m always done my soy milk by then) and to relax.

So anyway, like I said I’ve majorly adjusted my diet! I’ve been making big dinners with lots of leftovers pretty well every day to every other day. Tonight I made a stir fry with rice noodles, broccoli, cauliflower, red pepper, carrots, sweet & sour tofu, cayenne pepper, and mushrooms. It’s a merging of 2 recipes with some major modifications. The only thing that would have made it better is more broccoli, and maybe some of those cute lil baby corns I was pretty well using leftovers though so I used what I used.

So here’s the dealio! The stir fry was based off of this recipe and the crispy sweet&sour tofu was based off of this one (also included there is a sweet & sour sauce recipe if you don’t happen to have VH sweet & sour sauce, which I just randomly happened to have lol.) I can’t vouch for that recipe though since I haven’t tried it.

Sweet n’ Sour Tofu… and Life

Ingredients

Rice Noodles

1 pkg (8 oz) of Rice Noodles

Crispy Sweet & Sour Tofu

1 package (250 g) Extra Firm Tofu, pressed
4 tsp Ener-g Egg Replacer + 8 tsp water (mixed)
½ cup Cornstarch
½ cup Canola Oil
1 jar of VH Sweet & Sour Sauce

Stir Fry Sauce

6 tbsp Bragg’s Liquid Soy Seasoning (or soy sauce… Whatevs)
1 tsp Sugar
1 tbsp Lime Juice
1 tsp Vegetable Powder mixed with ¼ cup Cold Water
1 tsp Cayenne Pepper

Stir fry

Whatever veggies your heart desires

Instructions

Rice Noodles

Although the rice noodles are one of the quickest parts of this recipe, I recommend doing them first because you can cook them off and put them aside until you’re ready for them.
Boil water in a large stock put. Toss the rice noodles in for 10 minutes or so — just until they’re looking pretty soft and just about ready. Take them out and poor them into a strainer over the sink. Immediately poor lots of cold water over them — it’ll keep them from sticking. Set aside.

Crispy Sweet & Sour Tofu

Heat ¼ to ½ of the oil in a large non-stick skillet or wok. If you have a *large* one you can throw all the oil in — I had to do it in 4 batches so I didn’t use all the oil at once.
After the water is pressed out of the tofu, slice it into cubes. The smaller they are the crispier the finished product will be.
Toss the coated tofu cubes into the water/egg replacer mixture until coated well.
After this, toss them in cornstarch. They should come out dry and evenly covered.
Fry for 3-5 minutes on each side (they should be lightly browned) — note that if you can’t fit all the tofu on one layer, you’ll need to cook less at a time.
Meanwhile, heat the sweet&sour sauce over low heat in a sauce pan.
Stir the s&s sauce occasionally but make sure you keep the temperature low; you won’t need it for quite awhile.
Once the tofu is all cooked, set it aside in a large bowl.

Stir Fry Sauce

Mix all the ingredients and set aside.

Stir Fry

Put some oil in your wok and preheat it (high temperature).
Now it depends on what you’re throwing in your stir fry as to whether or not you just throw it all at once, but use your judgement; things that get mushy shouldn’t go in yet!
I’m not going to go through how to do a stir fry because truth be told I have NO idea. I just somehow never fail at it — baffling, I know.
Once your veggies are looking pretty well ready, poor your rice noodles on top. Poor your “stir fry sauce” upon this and toss it like a salad — I used 2 flippers for this.
Keep in mind your noodles are already cooked, so you’re pretty much just heating them up again.
Poor the warm sweet&sour sauce onto your prepared tofu cubes and make sure they’re thoroughly covered.
Mix tofu in with the rest of the stir fry. In a couple minutes it’s ready to serve.

So that’s it for the most amazing stir fry of my life; enjoy!

Life is great, work is great, and I feel great!

Have a fab night lovelies <3

Categories: { Dinners }

Comments: { 2 }

Chocolatey Chocolate Cake

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

A coworker’s last day at work was a couple days ago so I baked her a cake. I wanted it to be extra chocolatey so I opted to replace most of the cocoa with melted chocolate. Unfortunately this meant a very messy, not entirely bound together cake. But oh man it was good.

Awesome Sushi =)

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

This was my first time cooking rice in my rice cooker. I’ve had it almost 2 years so that might be considered… insane? Maybe. I’m okay with that; I got it for quinoa and I just make rice so rarely. I make rice rarely for the same reason that I had nori paper sitting in the cupboard for 5 years: Because I am incapable of cooking rice. I couldn’t believe how easy it was in my rice cooker! I knew it “should be” easy, but rice is “supposed to be” easy to cook in the first place isn’t it?

Double Chocolate Coconut Muffins

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Bam! I was craving muffins tonight and I always like things to taste like coconut (it’s my favorite individual flavor)… So I found a recipe for chocolate muffins and made some slight modifications…

“Meat” Loaf

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

So this was more like a not-meat blob of some sorts. It totally fell apart when I took it out of the glass dish… I made two of the same size and it was really, really good. It didn’t taste like the meat loaf that I remember but it has been quite a long time since I’ve had meat of any sorts so who am I to say that? My mom said it didn’t taste the same either, but don’t fret! We both agreed it was super tasty!

Chocolatey Almond Thing and Yves Veggie Chilli

Monday, March 12, 2012

Today… I had a bad day at work, so when I got home, to cheer myself up, I made some caramelized almonds (thanks to Stacey for the recipe!) and had a bowl of my ice cream (which it turns out is more of a pudding consistency)… Hey I’m not complaining! I haven’t had a good pudding since becoming Vegan about a year ago and I have lots of yummy ice cream recipes Anyway this tastes REALLY good.

Pineapple Upside-down Cake

Monday, March 5, 2012

My pineapple upside down cake… Looks good right? Oh it is.. I wanted to have pineapples today and my first idea was pizza but I have some Yves chilli in the fridge I need to eat before I make more pizza (I just made one a couple days ago) and it seemed like a good idea…

Sweet n’ Sour Tofu

Facebook

Categories

Favorite Blogs

Links