It's still soup weather here in Chicago, and I decided that I MUST make tomato soup. I want my soups to have a lot of texture and color, and I also need them to be dairy-free. For those of you who are still experiencing cold weather and are lactose-challenged, this soup is for you!

This soup is mostly easy to  make. Chop veggies, open cans, dump things into a pot, stir things, and that's pretty much it. However, you have to blend to get the desired creamy-ish consistency. Let me give you a word of warning: your kitchen will get messy if you have a regular blender. 

I've heard of this mythical thing called an immersion blender before, but I've never owned or used one. After making the soup this week, it's on my list of things to get. 

To blend the soup, I had to physically remove the soup from the pot, blend it (in two batches) and transfer it to another pot. As much as I tried to prevent my stove and counter tops from becoming covered in red-green liquid, I couldn't prevent it. Rest assured, though, it was an easy cleanup and was worth the effort. If you hate messes but like blending things in its own container (i.e. tomato soup in the pot without removing it first and then moving it to a new pot), I recommend getting an immersion blender!

I thought the cheese quesadilla was a fun touch, too. It's like a variation on tomato soup and grilled cheese. Tex-Mex and tomato soup go well together!

I was so pleased with the end product. Briefly blending the soup gave it a bit of creaminess, but it still maintained its heartiness. I enjoyed ripping the quesadilla apart and mixing it into the soup. 

This recipe also makes at least four servings. For me, this gave me two dinners and two lunches. I didn't get sick of it. I felt sad and empty when I finished my very last bite. I ate it with a quesadilla three times and mixed in leftover whole wheat mini shells the other time. If you're not planning to eat all of it within a few days, freeze the leftovers and eat in the coming weeks. 

I hope that you make this and enjoy it as much I did!

Dairy-Free Tomato Soup (adapted from Wellness Mama's Simple Tomato Soup recipe)

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup coconut oil
• 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced, or 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 2 large carrots, chopped
• 2 cups baby spinach
• 28 oz canned tomatoes (no added sugar)  or 6 fresh tomatoes, diced
• 2 cups bone broth* (can sub chicken broth or vegetable broth)
• 1 cup coconut milk
• 6 oz tomato paste
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 1/2 cup fresh basil or 3 Tablespoons dried

Instructions

1. Heat coconut oil over medium heat in large pan.
2. Add onions, garlic, and carrots to pan. Stir together and saute until onions are softened. 
3. Add tomatoes, stir, and cook for another 2 minutes.
4. Add the rest of the ingredients, stir, and bring to a boil.
5. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes. 
6. Using immersion blender or regular large blender, blend soup for 5-10 seconds. You may need to do this in batches. 
7. Let cool, ladle into bowl, and enjoy! Garnish with fresh basil, if desired. 

To make the quesadilla, melt butter in pan over medium heat, heat 1 small corn or whole wheat tortilla for 1-2 minutes, add a handful of shredded cheese of your choice, top with another small tortilla (to make a sandwich), flip quesadilla over, and heat for 1-2 minutes. 

* Bone broth is literally broth that is made from bones. This is most commonly done with beef and chicken. I make mine by cooking a whole chicken in a crock pot, removing whatever meat I want to eat, and then returning the rest of the chicken (carcass, pieces of chicken I won't eat) to the crock pot. I add water, vegetable scraps, and 1-2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and then cook on low for about 12-24 hours (my apartment smells amazing). When it's ready, I strain the broth and keep it for soups or other recipes. Believe me when I say that this is the best broth you will ever try. It is wholesome and full-flavored and contains the good fats and minerals that leach from the contents of the meat and bones. If you just want to have bone broth without going through the labor (although I promise it's easy), you can probably buy it at the grocery store. We have the Pacific brand, plus others at our Jewel. Here's more info on bone broth and how you can make it without a crock pot.  

This recipe requires very few ingredients. The honey will give it a hint of sweetness. You can omit it, and it will still taste good without it. Like most salmon recipes, you can make this in under 20 minutes. 

Instead of pasta last night, I recreated the dish with a side of cucumber salad (prepared while my salmon was in the oven). I'll post that simple recipe below, too. 

Walnut Basil-Crusted Salmon  
(serves 2 or serves 1 and  makes great leftovers for the next day)

Ingredients

• 2x 3-5 oz salmon fillets (with or without skin)
• 1 cup fresh basil leaves
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 1/4 cup graded Parmesan cheese
• 1 tsp honey (optional, for additional sweetness)
• salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Line baking sheet with aluminum foil and spray with cooking spray  or spread olive or coconut oil on foil to avoid fish from sticking.
2. Put basil, walnuts, cheese, and honey into food processor. Blend until ingredients are ground and well-mixed together (about 5-10 seconds). 
3. Lightly sprinkle salmon with salt and pepper on each side. Place salmon with skin side-down onto foil (if your salmon has skin). 
4. Using a spoon, equally spread the walnut mixture onto the tops of the salmon fillets (see picture). Form an even layer. 
5. Place salmon in the oven and bake for 12-15 minutes or until done. 

Cucumber and Tomato Salad

Ingredients

• 1 large cucumber, chopped
• 10 oz. (or about 1.5 cups) grape tomatoes, halved
• 1/2 cup chopped white onion
• 3 large fresh basil leaves, chopped
• 3 T olive oil (I used herb-infused olive oil with this recipe)
• salt and pepper, to taste

Combine all ingredients and enjoy!

Hi friends! Yesterday was National Registered Dietitian Day. Did you know that we can also call ourselves Registered Dietitian Nutritionists? After I passed my RD exam, I was able to choose whether I wanted to be an RD or RDN. Some people choose the latter, but it sounds like too much of a mouthful to me.  The RDN certification is relatively new, and it is completely interchangeable with the RD.  

I hope that all of my fellow RDs (and RDNs!) enjoyed and celebrated in style, whether that be a kale salad or a giant brownie topped with vanilla ice cream. Whatever floats your boat! I made my own "ice cream" yesterday, but I'll cover that later in this post. 

I didn't work as an RD on RD Day. I'm a registry/PRN/per diem employee at two hospitals, which means that I'm scheduled to work as needed.  I get 24 hours, or three days, guaranteed per week at one of my jobs, and I get one to two days per week at the other. This means that I occasionally have days off of work. It's good and bad. On one side, I get a day off to do what I want. On the other side, I don't get paid when I'm not working. The advantage to not working yesterday is that I was able to assemble a fun day-in-the-life post of an RD on National RD Day. Because who cares what I'm doing when I at work?

In all seriousness, though, I will do something similar to a day-in-the-life work post since people ask me all the time what I do in hospitals. Trust me, we do more than pick out diets for patients. 

Without further ado, here is my Day-in-the-Life (or photo vomit) from Wednesday, March 9th of 2016. 

7:45 am: I sleep in much later than I would on a typical weekday. Al gets up to get ready for work. I check my e-mail, Facebook, and the weather in bed. 

8:00 am: I roll out of bed, brush my teeth, and keep Al company while he gets ready for work. I open the door to let in fresh air. It's a beautiful March day. ​

8:45 am: I walk over to the Medical Office Center next to Illinois Masonic Medical Center. I had my annual check up last week, and I need to get my fasted blood test. Interestingly, I am looking forward to this. I look at patients' lab results every day at work, and I want to know how  mine compare since I know what all of these tests mean. The lab gets me in and out quickly. 

9:30 am: I'm hungry for breakfast. I whip up two scrambled eggs with coconut oil, a chopped yellow pepper, and a shredded basil leaf. I'm loving the natural light in the back yard. 

9:45 am: I multitask by eating breakfast and reviewing my friend's reactions to specific foods on her FODMAPS chart that she sent to me the previous night. I have more research that I need to do. 

10:15 am: I walk to my gym and go to my Pilates class. I mostly go to Pilates on Saturday mornings, but it's a treat to go on a weekday. The classes are much less crowded, and we get more individual attention. Like any other type of exercise, proper form is important for the best results and decreasing injuries. With smaller classes, our instructors can be more helpful with checking our form. 

Our class is just small enough today that we all get foam rollers. My instructor usually charges extra money for foam rolling classes, so we're a lucky group to get to do it for free. We don't roll on them as others do to massage sore muscles. We use them as a balancing tool. If you're familiar with Pilates, imagine doing the Pilates abs series while you're lying on top of this thing (parallel to your spine). Your core that's already working is engaging harder to balance. All of the exercises are modified since many of them are nearly impossible if done normally, but I think that it's a nice change from a regular Pilates mat class. 

11:00 am: I walk to Jan Dee Jewelry to pick up my bracelet that I dropped off months ago to get shortened (I kept forgetting to get it). 

This bracelet was given to me by one of my oldest friends who asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding. All of our bracelets have the same bow but are customized with our initials. 

12:15 pm: I arrive home and go through my physical and virtual mail.
​
12:45 pm: Lunch is served! I heat up a homemade mozzarella-stuffed broccoli turkey burger, spaghetti squash, and oven-baked french fries. I add tomato slices to my burger (doesn't it look like a heart?) and top my spaghetti squash with herb-infused olive oil, Parmesan cheese, and fresh basil. These are leftovers, so putting everything together only takes about five minutes. 

1:30 pm: I open my new shipment from Fabletics.  I get my workout clothes from many different places, but I've been ordering a lot from Fabletics lately. The Salar capri is one of my favorite workout pants. They're comfortable and are great for running, Pilates, and everything in between. I have the capris in pink and purple, and I wanted to try them in black. 

I decide to keep the Mosa tank. It's a fun and flowy top that is also great for running. I'm drawn to the detail in the back. I have to decide about the pants, though. They don't look as flattering on me as the colorful capris that I already own. 

2:00 pm: I make banana "ice cream". My cousin is a Beachbody coach and gave me this recipe from the Fixate 21 Day Fix book.  It's called Chunky Money Ice Cream in the book. To make a small, personalized version, blend 1 frozen banana (broken into chunks) and 1 Tbsp of natural peanut butter. You can top with chopped almonds or semi-sweet chocolate chips. That's all you have to do. It looks and tastes like ice cream. You must try it. 

2:30 pm-6:30 pm: I send e-mails back and forth for my friend's bachelorette party in Nashville in May, work on this blog post, and take a long shower. Al comes home. 

6:30 pm: I make dinner. I marinade wild cod in a bowl with lemon juice, 2 cloves of garlic, and olive oil. I bake it for 15 minutes at 350 degrees. While that's cooking, I use my spiralizer to turn one zucchini into "pasta". I chop up the last of a tomato in the fridge and add that, along with leftover spaghetti squash, fresh basil, Parmesan cheese, and olive oil to the zucchini and mix. Once the fish is done, I plate it on top of the zucchini. 

The end result is phenomenal. Together, it reminds me of clam linguine at an Italian restaurant. Forget about the fact that the pasta is actually a green vegetable and that the fish is not shellfish. It just tastes that good. 

​7:30 pm: My hair has naturally dried into an afro. I blow it dry and straighten it. 

8:00 pm: I work on my blog, play around on Instagram, do some more research on my Nashville trip and FODMAPS, and eat some frozen mango with Al. 

10:00 pm: Bed time! 

 Even though I've enjoyed loved buffalo chicken for many years, I've never taken the initiative to make it myself. Until I researched recipes and different sauces, I thought that all buffalo sauces were full of junk and could never be healthy. The truth is that you can make buffalo chicken in your crock pot with only three ingredients and very minimal labor. 

All you need is Frank's Red Hot Sauce (no weird ingredients), chicken breast, and butter. That's it. Add the chicken breasts to the crock pot, pour the bottle of hot sauce over it, and cook it. When it's done, the meat will fall apart. 

It will shred apart easily with a fork. 

Once the chicken is shredded, add everything back to the crock pot, add your butter, and mix. 

Pulled chicken is popular in between two pieces of bread, but I chose to make a salad and tacos. The picture below doesn't look very appetizing (it really tasted good!), but I made a great salad on my first night. I put the chicken on a bed of mixed greens and added fresh cubed mozzarella cheese, grape tomatoes (halved), and half of an avocado. No dressing needed. 

I had the same salad for leftovers the next day and then made tacos for dinner. I used corn tortillas (the El Milagro brand with no preservatives) and topped with the buffalo chicken, black beans, corn, mixed greens, and shredded pepper jack cheese. 

I put it in the microwave for 90 seconds and then topped them with half of an avocado, plain Greek yogurt (sour cream works too), and a slight sprinkling of chili powder. 

In true form, I had the tacos again for lunch. It turns out that three chicken breasts can get you a lot of buffalo chicken. I recommend trying this recipe and getting creative with your lunches and dinners!

Crock Pot Spicy Buffalo Chicken (serves 6+)

Ingredients:

• 3 large chicken breasts, boneless, skinless (or 4 small)
• 1 12-oz bottle of Frank's Red Hot Sauce
• 1-2 T butter

Directions:

1. Trim excess fat from chicken breasts and place into crock pot.
2. Pour entire bottle of Frank's Red Hot Sauce over chicken.
3. Cover and cook on high for 4 hours or on low for 8 hours
4. When done, remove chicken breasts from crock pot and place on cutting board. Pull chicken apart using fork and knife until all of the chicken breasts are shredded. Put shredded chicken back into crock pot, into the sauce. 
5. Add 1-2 T butter and mix well. 
6. The chicken is done! Make sandwiches, salads, tacos, pizza, or whatever else seems like a good idea to you!

Happy Thursday! While I was making my shopping list over the weekend, I was brainstorming vegetable side dishes to go with chicken breast. I'm used to making broccoli, sauteed spinach, brussels sprouts, a simple salad, or many varieties of potato,  but this vegetable doesn't usually come to mind: mushrooms. I almost always buy mushrooms to cook them in something, but I can't remember the last time I cooked them as a side dish. 

 Mushrooms are extremely easy to cook. I just threw them on a hot pan (Al bought them chopped already) with some butter and spices. Within ten minutes, they had softened, shrunken in size, and absorbed everything else in the pan. They already have a strong, umami flavor that doesn't require much tampering with to taste delicious. 

Here's a fun fact about mushrooms: did you know that they're one of the few plant foods that contain vitamin D? If they are irradiated, or exposed to ultraviolet light, they have even more. Apparently, cooked mushrooms also contain more of the vitamin than eating them raw. If you eat one serving of an irradiated and grilled portabella mushroom, for example, you could be getting more than half of  the vitamin D that you need in one day! Regardless, I wouldn't recommend depending entirely on mushrooms for your vitamin D needs (even if it is tasty!). It's best to get them from a variety of foods. 

For the main star of my dinner on Tuesday, I got my inspiration from a Hasselback chicken recipe on Proper Tasty. (If you don't already follow these Tasty pages on Facebook, I recommend it. You will sit there and drool.) My chicken breasts ended up being too thin to make deep slits. I was only able to make about two slits and had to cut down and then horizontally to be able to fit anything inside of it. It may have not looked like the Tasty video, but it tasted fantastic! The mushrooms also complimented the chicken perfectly.  

Spinach and Feta Hasselback Chicken (inspired by Proper Tasty's Hasselback Chicken)

Ingredients:

• 2 chicken breasts, boneless and skinless
• 1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
• 3/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1 cup baby spinach, rinsed
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 T butter

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Melt butter on stove on  medium heat. 
3. Add baby spinach. Cook, mixing around in butter, until wilted. 
4. Add feta cheese and mix immediately with spatula (it will melt instantly). Quickly pour mixture onto plate and put aside. 
5. Sprinkle chicken breasts with salt, pepper. 
6. Using a sharp knife, make 3-4 deep slits (short-wise; not long-wise) across the chicken breast. (Don't cut all the way through the chicken; cut about 3/4 of the way through.) Evenly distribute spinach-cheese mixture into slits. 
7. Evenly distribute shredded mozzarella cheese across the top of each chicken breast.
8. Put in oven for 25-30 minutes or until cooked through. 

Easy Sauteed Mushrooms

Ingredients:

• 1 package baby bella mushrooms, sliced (if not pre-sliced, prep mushrooms by wiping off  dirt with paper towel, remove stems, and slice lengthwise).
• 1-2 T butter or olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• Salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:

1. Melt butter/heat oil in pan on stove.
2. Add mushrooms and spices.
3. Cook about 10-15 minutes, gradually moving around with spatula.  If mushrooms appear dry, they may need more butter or oil. 
4. All done!

Happy Valentine's Day of 2016! It's hard to believe that it's been over TWO YEARS since I've written a blog post. I'm back, I'm registered,  and I'm ready to play.  I'll update you on what I've been doing during my absence, but for now, let's start with a light topic: breakfast!

I wrote about the 2-ingredient pancake two years ago. I wish I could say that I engineered this recipe myself, but this has been popular for some time among healthy-living bloggers. This is gluten-free and can potentially be dairy-free depending on your choice of toppings or if you avoid butter. 

I love this breakfast. While it's a sweet and filling creation for the morning, you can also enjoy this for lunch or dinner. 

With only two core ingredients, this pancake is very easy to make. All I do is mash my banana well with a fork (if you're using a frozen banana, microwave it in a microwave-safe bowl for 10-20 seconds, drain the excess fluid, then mash), add two eggs, and whisk/mix well. 

I like to add cinnamon as an extra ingredient. I mix it in with my banana/egg mixture. I heat butter or coconut oil over medium heat and pour the mixture onto the pan to create one gigantic pancake. You can make multiple small pancakes, too!

Wait at least five minutes before flipping the pancake. If you flip too early, it falls apart. If you wait too long, it burns. If you try to flip and you can tell it's going to fall apart, wait 1-2 more minutes. 

Once you flip, your pancake should be done in about 3-4 minutes. Put it on a plate and add whatever toppings you like. Toppings that I almost always use (as pictured above) include:

• 1 big spoonful of natural peanut butter
• A drizzle of pure maple syrup
• 1 big spoonful of plain yogurt
• A final dusting of cinnamon 

Recipe: 2-Ingredient Pancake

​Ingredients:

• 1 banana
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
• 1 Tablespoon coconut oil or butter
• Toppings of your choice (see above)
  

Directions:

1. Mash banana  well with fork in bowl. Add eggs and whisk/mix well with banana.
2. Add cinnamon and mix well (optional).
3. Heat oil or butter over medium heat. 
4. Pour mixture into pan. Let mixture sit for 5-7 minutes, occasionally using spatula to lift up edges of pancake. 
   
5. Once mixture sets at the bottom, carefully flip pancake using spatula. 
   
6. Let pancake cook on other side for 3-4 minutes or until lightly brown/cooked through. 
   
7. Put pancake on plate, add toppings, and enjoy! 

​

One of my favorite parts of being on a break from school is having the time to do things that I love doing. I'm finally getting to a point in my life where I realize that there's no value in sleeping until 10 am on my free days. By the time I'm done checking my e-mail, reading through my Facebook news feed, going through my USA Today news app, reading some blogs, and playing a few rounds of Candy Crush while still in bed, I'm famished and wanting to eat a late breakfast. This delays my workout, so I sit around and watch TV until I don't feel full anymore. Unfortunately, I'm hooked on a TV show on Netflix by this time and don't feel like doing anything except for watching more episodes. So I sit around and watch until I feel hungry again. And the cycle continues. By 4 pm, I'm in state of self-loathing for wasting an entire day, but I still can't get up from the couch and stop watching TV. Then Al comes home and wants dinner, and we watch more TV. Days like this of being a couch potato are fine once in a while if I'm sick or burned out, but doing them too often are just plain depressing. 

I was worried that I would do this on my break, but I've been waking up before the sun every morning and getting my workout out of the way so that I could start getting things done. Yesterday, I needed to bake cookies for a cookie exchange that one of my school friends was hosting. I also decided to make a warm spinach and artichoke dip to serve with chips. 

I saw a recipe on one of my favorite blogs (Peanut Butter Fingers) for chocolate crinkle cake mix cookies that I was dying to try. All you need is devil's food cake mix, canola oil, eggs, and powdered sugar. 

It was very easy to make. 

Unfortunately, I left the cookies in the oven for too long. They still looked raw to me after 12 minutes (the instructed baking time), and I let them bake for a few more minutes. I should have known better. I just finished a food science class that had labs and written exams on baking, so I should have realized that the cookies would harden as they cooled. They should have been moist and cake-like, but my finished product was dense and slightly bitter tasting. 

I tried heating one in the microwave for 10 seconds, and it tasted a lot better since it was sightly melted. At least I'll know for the next time to follow oven directions.

I didn't have time to buy more ingredients and bake new cookies, so I just hoped that mine were passable and put them in clear gift baggies with dark chocolate M&Ms and tied them closed with white ribbons. 

I also put together a quick spinach and artichoke dip using this recipe. I made the following changes: low-fat mayo, low-fat cream cheese (1/3 less fat), and non-fat Greek yogurt instead of sour cream. I served it at the party with tortilla chips, and it was a huge hit. It definitely made up for my hard cake cookies. 

I think that cookie exchanges are such a wonderful idea. Erica, the host, provided us with baggies so that we could go around the table and take whichever ones we wanted. It was fun to sample everybody's cookies and take them home with us. 

You come with one batch of cookies, and you leave with a variety of them!

The grapes and raspberries were the nutrition-friendly stars of the table. They didn't last very long. 

Everything was incredibly good. 

We also got to play with some adorable kids. I was never a "kid person", but I love being around them more and more as my friends are having babies. 

Soon after I got home with my bags full of cookies, my brother asked me if I could take Libby outside for a walk since he was tied up at work for a few more hours. We currently live a block and a half away from each other, so it's usually not a problem for me to take her outside. His girlfriend helps with Lib mostly, but I'll step in if she's busy. I don't usually mind going over there to see one of the most adorable dogs in the world. 

Anyway, Libby didn't greet me at the door when I walked inside his apartment. She'll usually be waiting at the door for me, or she'll come running over to me within a couple of seconds. I called her, and she didn't come. I walked to the back of his place and found her spread out on my brother's bed with her ears back, eyes closed, tail wagging, and the corners of her mouth curled up like she was trying to smile. Maybe she was acting guilty for being on his bed? Anyway, it was so ridiculously adorable. She actually does a doggie smile sometimes where she goes as far as scrunching up her snout and showing her teeth. Aren't dog smiles the cutest? 

I took her outside where she pranced around in the snow and then started eating it after she did her business. It was freezing outside, but I still took her to the dog park for about 10 minutes. There were a few dogs there, although she ate snow more than she played with other dogs. 

I'm in the suburbs at my parents' house until Sunday. I'm spending quality time with the pups there. Expect some more dog photos soon!

Alastair's brother's girlfriend Aysza (sounds just like "Asia") sent me the best birthday gift in June: a spiral cutter!

I decided to break it out and make zucchini "pasta" last week. I washed 2 large zucchini, and I had this in five minutes:

The spiral cutter is incredibly easy to use. I just stuck a zucchini into the hole and twisted. The spiral strips came out through the slits and fell right into the bowl. No chopping or cooking required. The only hard part was my sore arm. Maybe my arm will hurt less if I do this all the time. 

Since I was making "pasta", I needed some sauce. I chopped up a bunch of other veggies from the fridge (mushrooms, onions, jalapeno, celery, spinach) and made a sauce with ground turkey similar to this recipe. 

I poured the sauce over a large handful of "pasta" and sprinkled on some parmesan cheese. 

Ladies and gents, it was a hit! There was no tricking me into thinking that it was real pasta, but the crunchy and spiral texture of the zucchini made it a lot of fun to eat. Plus, I could twirl it around my fork like spaghetti! 

I'm definitely going to make zucchini pasta again. With my busy schedule, I like things that are easy and quick. 

Talk soon!

I made the most outstanding tofu for two nights in a row, and I must share the recipe. It's very simple; you need to prepare a quick marinade, let the tofu soak in it, and then pop it in the oven (or you can cook it on the stove top). Easy, peasy. 

I got the marinade recipe from The Vegan Foodie. You can view it on the website here. 

To make the marinade, you need the following ingredients:

1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
2 T soy sauce
1/2-1 T agave nectar
2 T extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic smashed (I used 2 T of minced garlic)
Any herbs that you want (or none at all)

You also need a block of firm tofu.

Add tofu, preheat oven to 350, then bake for 30 minutes. Flip the tofu after 15 minutes.

This recipe serves 2 people.

Here is the process in more detail: 

I made the marinade in a large bowl (just pour all of the ingredients in there and mix with a spoon) and then cubed my tofu. I know people like to press their tofu with a paper towel to absorb some of the water, but I never bother with that. I drain the water from the package and then start chopping away at the block. If you want to, though, you can plop the wet block on a cutting board, place a paper towel on top, and apply pressure until your paper towel is soaked through (at least that's how I do it). You can also put something like a heavy book on top of the block for a few minutes or buy a legitimate tofu press. For me, though, it's not worth the trouble.

I almost always cube my tofu. I can sometimes find tofu that is already cubed. If not, I cut the tofu in half by separating the top and the bottom of the block. I then leave the halves on top of each other and cut both width-wise and length-wise until I have relatively equal-sized cubes. It doesn't matter how big your cubes are; the most important thing is to try to get them to be the same size! 

I then throw the cubes into the marinade and let it sit covered for a few hours in the fridge (about 2 hours is enough for me, but you can do it for more or less time). Marinating in a bag is a probably a better idea, because there is always too much tofu in my bowl for all of it to be covered in the sauce. I usually take it out of the fridge a few times and stir the mixture so that all of the cubes get some flavor.

I preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and put the cubes in a baking pan that is large enough to spread them out in a single layer. I use a big spoon with holes (what do you call that?) so that the liquid can drain back into the bowl. Whatever you do, try to keep as much of the marinade as you can. Put the tofu in the oven and cook for 30 minutes (flipping them halfway through).

You can also sautee the tofu on the stove, but I find that the oven crisps it up

While the tofu is baking, I chop up a red onion (about 1/4 of a large onion; 1/2 of a small onion) and throw them into the leftover  marinade to pick up extra flavor. When the tofu is finished, you can pour the marinade with the onions on top of it, and it's delicious. I also cut up a few slices of tomato to add and spread some goat cheese crumbles over everything. You can really garnish with anything- it's up to you.

My inspiration for this balsamic tofu came from a balsamic tofu wrap that I ate from Whole Foods that was outstanding. I wanted to go home and make it myself. I still haven't eaten the tofu in a wrap, but I might try it next week. With some baby spinach, tomato, clinatro, and a whole grain wrap, I bet it would be a perfect lunch.

I hope you make this if you want a good vegetarian meal. It's so good!

I got home from California on Wednesday, and I hung around my parents' house for a couple of days before going back to the city. My mom started a vegan diet on January 1st, and she wanted me to make a vegan-friendly meal for Thursday night. She wanted spaghetti squash. Since I make it all the freaking time, though, I wanted to make another dish along with that yellow beast of a squash. I thought it would be fun to make quinoa burgers since I never had them or made them before, so I researched recipes and went grocery shopping. 

They were a piece of cake to make. The longest part was preparing the quinoa. Once that was done, I threw a bunch of ingredients in a food processor, mixed everything together, formed patties, and cooked the burgers on the stove. 

The mix that came out of the food processor was very tasty. That's one of the good thing about vegan food: you can sample the uncooked "burger batter". 

I cooked the spaghetti squash in the oven and just made up a simple sauce by adding sauteed onions and mushrooms and spices to a store-bought (vegan) pasta sauce. It was just fine. It was even better when I added parmesan cheese. If I ever became a vegan, I would have such a hard time giving that stuff up. 

The burgers were also fantastic. I got the recipe from sparkpeople.com. The link is here. 

Here is the recipe for very easy and tasty vegan quinoa burgers (serves six people):

2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 cup pine nuts or pumpkin seeds (I used pine nuts)
1/2 cup fresh cilantro
1/2 cup raw, diced onion
1 cup cooked black beans
1 tsp salt (I omitted this)
3 cups cooked quinoa (1 cup dry)
1/2 cup diced sweet red pepper
bread crumbs (you can use rice flour for a gluten-free alternative)
2 Tbs. olive oil

Cook the quinoa according to the instructions on the package. When finished, put all of the ingredients in a food processor or blender except for the quinoa and bread crumbs. Blend them until they have a mushy consistency (look at my after-blending photo) and then mix the "mush" with quinoa and bread crumbs in a bowl. The recipe says to roll the mixture in the bread crumbs before cooking, but I just mixed everything together. It turned out fine. 

Roll the mixture into balls, flatten them out so that they look like burgers, and then throw them on a hot pan on the stove top to cook. Cook for 3-4 minutes on each side, or flip when they look golden-brown. My pan was too hot, so I slightly burned the burgers (see photo). I'm learning things, one day at a time. 

If you're going all vegan on these, do not omit the bread crumbs! Your burger will fall apart and will resemble quinoa hash more than anything. 

What a great recipe! Even if you're not a vegan, these are worth making. 

Have a great night, everybody!