Tofu - It's What's for Breakfast!

What a beautiful weekend!!  It has been sunny and warm enough to almost make me think winter is not just around the corner!  But we have been curled up with our books in front of the fire anyways!

Saturday night we watched the movie "Earthlings".  Wow.  It is an excellent film on the meat, poultry, leather and fur industries and animals used in scientific experiments and how the animals in these industries are treated.  It is narrated by Joaquin Phoenix.  My daughter watched it with me, but it is quite graphic, and I would caution against letting your young children watch, even though it is an important message that I personally think everyone should hear.  It definitely made me think about some things in a different way, and I think it opened my daughter's eyes as well.  You can watch it for free at http://www.earthlings.com/.

On a lighter note, this morning we had a fabulous breakfast tofu scramble.  This is so amazing.  At first I thought breakfast was going to be the toughest part about cutting animal products out of my diet, but like everything else, the way we eat is just a habit.  But this scramble, is so good that I will never miss eggs again!  And it's as easy as making scrambled eggs! 

After chopping the veggies, it took about 10-15 minutes to make.  I minced 3 cloves of garlic, chopped one medium onion, some mushrooms, half a zucchini, half a red pepper, and asparagus.  I added the garlic, onions, mushrooms and zucchini to the pan and sauteed them in a little margarine.  Then I crumbled up a block of tofu (I used Wildwood sprouted organic tofu that had been frozen and thawed and squeezed out as much moisture as I could).  Then I added this to the pan and stir fried for about 5 minutes.  Then I added about a 1/4 cup of nutritional yeast and some soy milk (this gives it a creamy texture).  I added some cumin seeds, turmeric (this gives it that yellow 'egg' kind of colour), salt and pepper and some powdered garlic.  Then I added the asparagus, red pepper and a bunch of spinach and stir fried for about 5 minutes more.  And viola!

Today is my son's actual birthday (Happy Birthday Kenny Bo!!), so it was cupcake making day.  We needed 25 for his class and then the rest will be for our family's birthday celebration tonight.  He picked out Cookies n' Cream Cupcakes from the Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World Cookbook, and they turned out smashingly.  The cupcakes themselves are chocolate and there are ground up Oreo cookies in the icing.  And I found the little snack sized Oreos to garnish the top.  We got to lick the beaters after making the frosting and I can hardly wait to taste the cupcakes after dinner!

Tonight for dinner I'm trying out a lentil "meatloaf" recipe from Colleen Patrick Goudreau's The Vegan Table.  With mashed potatoes and some roasted Brussels sprouts from the market it's sure to be irresistible. 

Is it dinner time yet???