All American Meal

Tonight for dinner we had what seemed to us like a really traditional American meal: salad, potato, vegetable, and BBQ meat. Not our usual fare at all! Of course ours was a vegan version but as we normally eat Asian themed meals, this was as close to American as we get!

I roasted sweet potatoes in the oven at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes. They were smallish so they cooked quite quickly. I just gave the skins a quick scrub, dried them and then plunked them on the oven racks. One burst (be forewarned) but the rest were delicious. If you let them cool a bit before peeling them, the peel just comes right off with a whole cooked yam left on your plate.

The vegetable was the roasted asparagus that I blogged about a few weeks ago. Not enough left for my corn chowder unfortunately.

The salad was with my mother's typical French vinaigrette: 3 tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp vinegar, 1 minced clove of garlic, 2 tsp Dijon mustard, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp pepper, chopped parsley. You can replace the vinegar with lemon juice and sometimes I use 2 tbsp vinegar if I am feeling like eating something a little more sour. This is our go-to salad dressing.

Our "meat" was tofu of course. I used extra firm tofu and cooked it in this yummy BBQ sauce from Dreena Burton's new cookbook. Dreena has a vegan blog too and is the Canadian vegan queen, just like Isa is the American vegan queen. Dreena's cookbooks were recently recognized on Michelle Obama's White House website. Quite the coup for a Canadian vegan mom and cookbook writer from Whiterock, BC.

BBQ Tofu (as always, adapted to fit what I have in my pantry)

1/2 tbsp tahini
2 tbsp ketchup
1 tbsp low sodium soy sauce
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp Italian herb mix
1/4 tsp smoked paprika
1 pkg extra firm tofu

In a glass dish (8x12) mix all the sauce ingredients. Pat the tofu dry, cut into 3 slices and into squares. Pat all the pieces dry. Coat the tofu in the sauce and leave in the dish. Cover with foil, bake 20 minutes at 375 degrees, flip the tofu, cover and bake another 10 minutes. You could probably BBQ the tofu too but I like to have some sauce left to dip my tofu into as I eat it. If you BBQ it, it would probably make excellent sandwiches.

For dessert I have strawberry ice-cream setting in the freezer (all american meal eh?) but it's not ready yet so the recipe will have to be posted later when we've decided if it's yummy or not.


Enjoy meatless Monday tomorrow! Lots of yummy fare to eat without using any meat!

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