Tofu Stir-Fry

Surprisingly enough, I made this 4 or 5 times before I was able to nab a picture of it. Why? Probably because I eat it so quickly.

So, the cool thing about stir fries is that they are really easy to make and you can use basically any protein (I dumpster tofu most often) and any vegetables that you have on hand or froze.  It's especially good for mixing frozen veggies with fresh, since it hides the freezer taste that sometimes accompanies veggies that have been in the freezer a little too long. It's a dumpster diver's paradise.  The stir fry below features marinated tofu, previously frozen green beans, orange bell pepper, corn, zucchini, and red onion.

TOFU (or meat) MARINADE

<u>Ingredients:</u>
- 1 block extra-firm tofu - best when previously frozen, thawed, and then pressed to get out all the liquid with paper towels (I'll cut it up first and then squeeze it to get out even more moisture before marinating it)
- 4 Tbsp soy sauce
- 2 Tbsp Mirin (find it in the Asian section of your supermarket - it's pretty much a dumpster chupacabra.  Don't hold your breath for this ingredient)
- 2 Tbsp Rice vinegar (same as the mirin)
- 1 Tbsp honey (vegans can use agave nectar or some other sweetener)
- 2 Tbsp grated ginger
- 2 tsp toasted sesame oil (I've dumpstered this once)
- 4 cloves garlic
- 1/2 cup onion, chopped
- 1 tsp sririacha sauce (or other hot chili sauce you have - more or less depending on how spicy you want it)
- Scallions (optional)

Thoroughly mix all these ingredients, then fold the tofu into it so it's liberally covered with everything.  Let it sit for a minimum of 20 minutes (time to cut your veggies) or overnight in the fridge.

ACTUAL STIR-FRY

<u>Ingredients:</u>
- 2 tbsp canola, safflower, or vegetable oil (I like using veggie oil the best)
- VEGGIES

Put oil in a pan or wok.
Get your pan or wok super-hot.
Put in your marinated tofu - you want a browning sear on the outside, but you don't want it to burn.  Stir fry for about 2 minutes, making sure each side gets browned (otherwise the tofu is in danger of falling apart).  Then, push it up to the side of the wok (if you're using a pan, just shift it to the outside edge). 
Add your veggies in the order of which take the longest to cook (carrots, mushrooms, peppers, bok choy stems, etc.) to whichever take the shortest (frozen pre-cooked veggies, corn, bok choy leaves, etc.). 
Once they cook up a bit, add the remainder of your marinade for extra flavor.  Keep cooking until the veggies are cooked, but still have a bit of crunch (taste testing is a great way to tell if they're ready).

You can eat a stir-fry straight (I do this), or make it last a little longer by putting it over rice or pasta.  It's a large initial investment of buying ingredients from the grocery store, but once you buy those basics (which are all pretty cheap), they last you MANY, MANY more meals, so it's worth it.

Items not dumpstered or donated: Ginger, garlic, sesame oil, mirin, rice vinegar, vegetable oil

Zucchini Noodles

My favorite vegan/raw food restaurant does a mean zucchini noodle dish that I'm super into.  So, when I dumpstered 5 zucchini and didn't feel like making zucchini bread or ratatouille, I decided to try making zucchini noodles for the first time instead.

<u>Ingredients:</u>
- 4 zucchini
- flavorful sauce of some sort (I used my pesto cream sauce recipe, but substituted peanuts and a little sesame oil in my pesto instead of cashews, since that's what I had)

Zucchini noodles are painfully easy to make.  There are cool contraptions you can buy to make it look more like pasta, but you basically just need a vegetable peeler and some time to accomplish a more fettuccine-type noodle.  You peel the skin off, then just keep peeling around the whole zucchini longways until you get to the seeds at the core.  At that point, you can cut the core up for a salad, stir fry, or ratatouille so you're using the vegetable in more ways than one!

Once you've made the zucchini noodles according to the directions above, you can make up some kind of sauce (I made a pesto cream sauce to keep it in the raw food category.  If you're vegan, you could just do pesto plus a tomato or something).  It's a pretty flavorful dish.

One thing to mention, though - the zucchini noodles lose their moisture if you salt them and leave them in the fridge over time, so try to eat them all up after one or two meals or they can get kind of gross...

Items not dumpstered or donated: cream, sesame oil, garlic

Ratatouille

One of my favorite things to do with squash and zucchini is make ratatouille with it. Ratatouille is traditionally a rustic French dish that packs a lot of flavor and is considered an art to execute perfectly. The dish has become a hallmark of lauded French chefs, and can make or break a restaurant (they even made a movie about it).

My Mom made a version of it when I was growing up that was far from haute cuisine - It normally consisted of cooked veggies with some kind of Ragu sauce thrown over it. The fact that my Mom called it "ratatouille" probably would've made Julia Child turn over in her grave, but it still got me to eat greens I otherwise would've skipped.

So, there's definitely a ratatouille spectrum out there that you can get creative with. Ratatouille can take a few minutes or a few hours, depending on how fancy you want to get with it. I'm going to give you a pretty basic (i.e. non-traditional) version of it to try. If you like that, I'd suggest googling more extreme recipes.

Now, one major difference between the ratatouille that I make and a traditional one: 99% of traditional ratatouille recipes include eggplant. Mine doesn't. Don't get me wrong, I love eggplant, I just prefer to use eggplant as the main component of a dish instead of as a supporting character. A lot of traditional ratatouilles also use alcohol and take a long time to cook down. I don't always have time for that.

And so, on to the recipes. Both are fast, but taste a bit different since one uses a home made veloute-like sauce (with stock, butter, and flour) and the other uses previously canned tomato sauce. I'll give you the option to choose your own adventure in a second...

Ingredients:
- Squash
- Zucchini
- Onion
- 2 tbsp Butter or Olive oil
- Tomato (optional)
- Eggplant (optional)
- Lemon, juiced (optional)
- Flour (optional)
- Chicken or Vegetable stock (optional)
- Tomato sauce (optional)
- Salt & pepper & parsley to taste

Throw all your favorite chopped veggies into a pan with some butter (olive oil if you're vegan) on medium heat with some salt and pepper and cook until everything's soft.

Here's where the 2 possibilities diverge...choice one is a lemon veloute sauce (one of the five French mother sauces) that requires SLIGHTLY more work, and choice two is over in another 30 seconds...

1) Add about a half cup of stock (chicken works best in my opinion, but veggie works too), turn your heat to medium-high, and let it boil down just a little. Take a tablespoon of flour (maybe a teeny bit more than that) and sprinkle slowly into your sauce, stirring the whole time to thicken it up. When everything's sticking together pretty well, add the juice from 1/2 to a full lemon. Continue stirring, taste it, add some fresh parsley, and you're finished. (This option is the one pictured above, with a tomato in there, which adds to the sauce as well).

2) Open a jar/can/whatever of tomato sauce (bonus points if it's home made and home canned), pour just enough in the pan to cover your vegetables until the sauce heats up, taste it to see if it needs anymore salt or pepper and you're finished.

This can be a side dish or put over rice or noodles for a heartier meal.

Items not dumpstered or donated: Butter/olive oil, Salt/Pepper