We have been knocking out a pound of organic tofu a week and with that, I've been experimenting with tons of new recipes to continue to diversify our increasingly vegetarian / vegan diet.
Last night I played with From My Bowl's Vegan Cashew Tofu recipe, substituting homemade hoisin (super easy to make and doesn't have sugar as the first ingredient as storebought hoisin does), on a bed of fresh swiss chard from our garden, and using peanuts instead of cashews (organic peanuts in the bulk aisle cost less than half the price as their organic cashew buddies...AND because peanuts are technically legumes - yep! - they aren't as water-intensive as cashews...plus a higher proportion are grown domestically. I noticed prepackaged cashews the other day coming from Madagascar...and they weren't even organic! Aaah!). It was *quite* tasty, I gotta say. Check it out - oh and maybe double the sauce, 'cause that sauce is hella yum...
(Note: Yes, my husband is a butcher at our local co-op, but it doesn't mean we are mega-carnivores! We simply eat meat/fish more as a treat than as a staple, and invest in the best we can. After raising our own pastured heirloom meat chickens back on the farm, I've found it difficult to eat storebought 'organic' chicken because it's not pasture-raised, it's not heirloom, and it's totally greenwashed because most of the public believes the lie that 'free range' means 'outdoors' which it does not. They're living in cramped indoor housing with a tiny door at the back corner as "access to the outdoors", and chickens aren't exactly brave enough in these situations to make a break for it) and therefore these animals are NOT living their best lives. Any chicken that will literally DIE if it is not processed by 10-12 weeks because they've gained too much weight for their little legs is not a humanely bred/raised bird. Pay attention to that when you are buying meat, because you're rarely if ever going to find that at your local - even purportedly 'sustainable' - grocer. The only time I've ever seen it was Cook's Venture that my husband helped introduce at his last co-op, but sadly their pasture-raised birds are so poorly packaged that they often arrived (both to his store and when we special ordered it to our home) with the seals broken and much of the meat having to be thrown out because of their lack of attention to food safety. We've recently found a NW Washington pastured heirloom chicken farm that we're going to buy ours from until we're able to raise our own chooks again, and are willing to wait til they're available. The humanity is there, and the taste is exponentially better than anything the grocery store sells.)
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