Adventures of a healthy-ish pseudo-foodie

  I finally mastered the art of torn tofu!    I'm excited about this because I feel like I've unlocked two important skills. One is the crispy torn tofu that I've been seeing videos about. The other is the idea of pre-mixing sauce ingredients, pre-crisping my tofu, and then when we're ready to eat, it's just a matter of dumping the sauce into a hot wok, adding the tofu a minute later, and tossing it to coat the tofu. I love this takeout-style sesame sauce, but I'll be trying this with other sauces as well. The Recipe: Tofu: 2 blocks tofu 1 tsp salt 3 tb cornstarch Tear tofu into irregular chunks Wrap chunks in a kitchen towel and place in the fridge (in a bowl) for at least 1 hour to drain  Toss with salt and cornstarch Spread on baking sheets Bake at 425 for about 30 minutes, flipping partway through Sauce: (adapted from  Kitchen Sanctuary ): 1 tb sesame oil 2 cloves garlic, minced 1 tb Chinese rice wine 2 tb honey 1 tb sambal oelek 3 tb ketchip 2 tb brown suga...

  These didn't rise well for some reason, so just imagine that they did.  Another muffin post! A friend made these for the kids recently, and we loved them. I think the magic is the combination of the (freshly ground) oat flour together with some whole oats. They're also not too sweet; just perfect with the chocolate chips. The Recipe: 2 bananas 1/3 cup butter, melted 2/3 c sugar 2 eggs 1 tsp vanilla extract 1 tsp baking soda 1/4 tsp salt 2 c oats, ground into flour 1/2 additional oats  1/3 c chocolate chips Grind the 2 c oats in the blender Add all other ingredients besides the additional oats and chocolate chips; blend Mix in the additional oats and chocolate chips Bake at 350 for about 25 minutes   The Verdict:   Overall grade:  A Overall reason:  Easy to make, great texture Time to prepare:  10 minutes of work, 25 minutes of baking Kid quote:  No quotes were uttered. They were stuffing their faces. 

  When I actually measure, instead of following my heart, the top is more craggy than this.     I made these once on a whim, and the kids loved them so much that they're in the rotation now. I worked from a recipe by  Love and Lemons  (seemed appropriate), and I make no changes aside from using gluten-free flour (usually Bob's 1-1 mix). I do feel inclined to see if they're still good with less butter and sugar, and to try to get some fiber in there (oat bran?), but I haven't experimented yet.   I do think that they would be good with more lemon zest, but I haven't bothered buying extra lemons just to zest them. I'll have to plan this together with another recipe that uses lemon juice, so I can make that happen.     The Recipe (from Love and Lemons): 2 1/4 c flour (I use gluten free 1 - 1 mix) 2 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp salt 2 tb lemon zest 1 c plain yogurt 2 eggs 2/3 c sugar 1/2 c butter, melted 1/2 c milk 1/4 c lemon jui...

That one broken puffed tofu at the bottom looks like shrimp     I almost didn't write this one up as a "recipe" because I worked from a soup base and really just dumped stuff into the pot, but I want to remember this as a meal option. I did make the dipping sauce, at least.   I had previously made a few attempts at spicy hotpot, working from various spicy bases and adding Sichuan peppercorns. They tasted good but were way too oily for our liking. This time, I found a mushroom hotpot base that was a liquid packet (as opposed to the solid oily blocks we'd had before) and it's a winner. I should have taken a photo of the package.   For the sauce, I used the first option on  this page  and followed my heart for the proportions.     The Recipe: 1 hot pot base mix (I like the liquid mushroom flavor) Vegetables: I used dried shiitakes, radish,   and bok choy Proteins: I bought frozen tofu skin knots and   refrigerated pre-fried   tofu bloc...