I got one of these little lunch Crock-Pots recently. I always bring my lunch to work and this makes it so much easier to enjoy what I brought without having to wait in line for the (often dirty) microwave at work. (Ew! I know!)
I am so glad that I have it. Plug it in when you get to work and by lunchtime your meal will be nicely reheated. It’s great for soups and stews, but I’ve also used it for pasta and stir fry with rice.
No Pie Apple Pie
I make this recipe when I have a lot of extra apples. It fills the craving for Apple Pie. Has anyone come up with a good gluten-free pie crust yet? I eat this pie filling alone, with vanilla coconut ice cream or over cinnamon raisin toast. It would probably be good on waffles, too. Maybe I’ll try that this weekend.
Here’s the recipe: No Pie Apple Pie
My Tweaks: I use Earth Balance instead of butter and I add some golden raisins.
I was craving Chinese Orange Tofu, but still haven’t found a good Chinese place that delivers to my house. I had a bunch of ingredients on hand that I thought I could put together to make something similar, so I went looking and found this recipe for Sweet & Sour Quorn & Vegetable Stir Fry. OMG. So good! Who needs a Chinese restaurant?
My Tweaks: I used the juice of 2 organic oranges and 1 clementine and added the zest of the clementine to the marinade to bump up the orange flavor. Also substituted Sake for the sherry. I added a block of tofu to make the recipe enough to stretch out as leftovers. I used the dry fry method for the tofu and marinated it with the quorn. I substituted celery, carrots, scallions and broccoli for the vegetables (bell pepper, baby corn, zucchini) in the recipe. Also used tapioca starch instead of cornstarch to thicken the sauce and served over steamed brown rice.
TofuXpress
The trick to really great tofu is pressing out all of the water before cooking and marinating. I used to stack a pan and a big can of tomatoes on my block of tofu, but it required constant supervision to make sure that the pan and can didn’t start sliding off the block of tofu and have the whole thing end up on the floor. Then someone told me about the Tofu Xpress. It’s a great contraption that allows you to put your tofu in the press in the morning, then store it in the refrigerator until you get home in the evening. The tofu will become a dense, firm block throughout the day and be fully ready for you to use.
I use the dry fry method to cook my tofu for most stir-fry type dishes. It comes out crispy and chewy, just like deep-fried but with no oil. Here are the instructions. How to Cook Tofu Like the Pros. The marinades are also very good.