Tasty Tuesday - Tofu Pad Thai

Hi!
I'm really excited about our cooking at the moment. We've been trying a few new things (new to us, anyway) and deviating away from 'old favourites' to expand our dinner repertoire.  So, I want to share some of our love of food and cooking with you.
We try and eat pretty healthily, and we're borderline vegetarians- getting done in by chicken, bacon, and fish occasionally. I'm a notoriously bad recipe follower in that I read the ingredients list and start putting those things into a bowl in that order before I realize that there's actually a method to be followed (whoops), and when I do actually follow the method, I tend to add and remove things as I see fit. This meal doesn't have carrot?! I add carrot. I figure I have a fairly good idea of what flavours taste good with other ones, so adding or subtracting things makes them tasty for us.
That being said, my mother laments the fact that my brother won't eat vegetables, and I don't blame him, living with her. She enjoys her vegetables, done the way she likes them, and I don't. I couldn't stand them. It took me a long time to learn to love certain types of veggies and 'untrain' myself that not everything is gross. We're still working on it. To that end, if you do happen to try something we make (yay!) you, of course, should experiment with things you like. Example: Most Asian foods call for coriander. We hate the stuff, it's poison, so we never add it. If you like it, add it. Maybe it's tasty for you.

So, today's Tasty Tuesday is a recipe I tried last week in order to use up some tofu that had been sitting in my fridge for too long. That being said, I don't/didn't like tofu. We'd tried it before, marinating it for 15 mins or so. Trust me on the part where I say that the secret to making this meal unbelievably tasty is to marinate your tofu, all day. Otherwise yes, tofu is gross. All measurements are approximate- I don't measure. Psh. This is for two, there are two of us. Also, although it looks really long and involved, it's because I'm a Postgrad student who writes 6,000 word essays, and I've forgotten how to be succinct. It's basically just making sauce, then chucking everything in a pot and cooking it for a short time at high heat.

this is boring and everything sucks.

So I'm (clearly) a little less active about this whole blogging thing now that I'm back at school. That whole free all day to write and exercise and nap thing? Doesn't work so well when you cycle the 10km to Uni and back, read a million articles and  on your two spare days, either volunteer at a school, or spend the day doing crazy housework and cooking and stuff.
Didn't see this lack of writing time a few months ago, apparently.
But so it goes. I'm doing my best here.
Also I just bought a 20in computer screen cos it was 'cheap' and I'm waiting for the connector to connect my macbook to it so then I can use it and do Uni with it and actually see my screen. Joy.

Anyway, I'm about to make a tofu pad thai, which has been marinating all day, so it should be yum. Also the other day we had Vientamese Vegetarian rice-paper rolls and they were quite tasty though better, I think, as a non vegetarian option. I took photos as we made them cos they're pretty awesome and it's even more fun because we use the rampant mint from our garden, but they're super healthy and easy and fresh and if you're into that kind of thing you'll like these. But I'll post that up later.

We're trying, at the moment, to branch out into cooking more things - hence the tofu pad thai. I have a list of food on our white-board-fridge that I want to make in the future, and none of it is super exciting, just like, dahl and chickpea burgers and stuff.

I was going to write about a guy at Uni who's super negative about everything and just makes me want to poke his eyes out with a blunt fork, but I think I need to go chop some things, so here's me jotting that down for another time.

Also, despite being engaged since early October 2010, I think Nic and I are going to have our engagement picnic/board-games night/pot-luck/thing in the next two weeks or so. This time for realz. I had 'engagement picnic?' in my iCal for about the last 2 months, slowly being pushed back and back, but we might do it this time. But it aint gonna be a traditional party. I want casual. I want games (card and board.), I want wine, I want people to contribute. We would also like presents but I worry that if we label this thing an 'engagement party' then we're obligated to invite cousins, and my cousins have money which would mean they bring the best presents and at the same time I just want to have friends over to my house for a night of board games which isn't an engagement party at all.
Hrumph.
What to do?

if it's 30 degrees out...

...why not have the oven on for a few hours?

Today my mother came around for lunch. Which was nice, I suppose. We went for a walk up to the little park near by so, as Nic puts it, we could have some 'mother-daughter bonding time'. Really it was just an opportunity for me to suss out some important things such as - car insurance. Who is it with, and why can't I get my car fixed with it. Evidently she knew as much as I did.
Which is nothing.
Also, about whether the family business will pay for my health insurance when I turn 25 and can no longer be on her policy. No, they won't. So, until next year, no health cover for me, probably.
Also about wedding budgets and plans, which she seemed generally disinterested in, and still seemed to be of the opinion that having a wedding in one's backyard (we don't have a backyard) with a catered spit-roast was just as an acceptable way to go as any. Which it probably is. For some. But not for me. So we sussed out budgets a little bit, to which she likened the 5k she hesitantly said she would contribute to 'paying for a whole year of Uni' for me. Is that meant to be a guilt trip? I'm trying to do this wedding as cheap as I can. Put it this way, we're working with a 10k budget, total. My cousin is getting married this October and her dress is going to cost between 10-15k. Um. Yeah. So how about we don't complain. Also I found out she threw away her dress. Which is probably ok, cos it's a probably a little too vintage, stained, and informal for me (even with our super informal wedding, I'd still like a -nice- dress.)... but still, I would have liked to have seen it to have the chance. Then again, I guess if your marriage ended and you were unhappy with the marriage, then you don't keep the dress forever and ever. Maybe. That might be sometime to discuss later: The weigh-up between getting a second-hand dress vs. new, and also: what to do with the dress when I'm done with the dress. Being as I don't plan on having kids, I don't imagine a daughter I'll be able to give it to... but we'll see. (At 10k, I can imagine you'd not just get rid of it... but at $700, I'd be more inclined to donate/sell/whatever it).

Anyway! We had lunch, then played a game of bananagrams with her, which was fun. Then the left.
And we started baking.
We baked a new nut-bar based on last-weeks tasty-delicious-omg-can't-believe-we-ate-boxed-museli-bars-from-the-supermarket concoction. We also baked an apple crumble, and Nic is about to begin some granola.
Under the cut are some approximate recipes. We tend to abide by the If It Looks Like Enough And Tastes Or Smells Good, It's Probably Enough measuring system. Ie: Throw in stuff. Taste. Throw in more stuff. Or not. But, I'll try my best. Also, there are pictures!!

 

Top of the apple crumble once baked.

another for today...

I feel a change in the air.
I can't explain what- whether it's something in me, spurring me on to join the gym and do some yoga classes (finally), or to keep in touch with girlfriends (now that I finally have a couple), or whether it's just being back in warm weather which, let's face it, is always a good excuse to be more proactive about life... Plus I get to eat fruit (stone fruit! Yum) with abandon, and suggest salads as a suitable dinner option because it's not 10 degrees outside and soup makes much more sense.

Yesterday we bought our chicken from the chicken shop, after I'd had a couple of moments while in North Am over where my meat was from. Nic and I are pretty close to vegetarianism- we just use chicken as a staple part of a lot of our meals, we have ham in our rolls and we love bacon on occasion. While we were in North Am we got some (exquisitely delicious) pork ribs and I looked down and there were the ribs of a whole pig shared between Nic and I. (Maybe not so much but it was a LOT). And I thought: My god. This pig gave up its life just so we could have this meal. And I felt horrible. Another time I had a lobster pie, and the meat from the claws was still in the shape of the claws and I thought: Jeez... this was a real animal. Sometimes it's easy to forget- you can't really picture where a chicken breast GOES once it has no skin and feathers and bones attached, and drumsticks don't look anything like legs, and bacon is just meat, hey? But the point was, we came back wanting to try and be a little more ethical about our meat, knowing there's only so many beans and lentils we can eat, and still liking protein and bacon too much... So we found our chicken at the chicken shop because it's free range, grain fed, no chemical processing, hopefully more happy chickens. We'd buy things at the farmers market but it's so, so expensive. So that will have to wait until we both have real jobs. On that note, I desperately want one of these. Because they're cool, and I want to grow year-round fruit and I don't want to have to wait 3 years and for the trees to get too big and to wait until I own my own house so I can actually plant them. These guys are meant to stay little! Nic would be able to reach the tall branches. And I could eat my own apricots and peaches. Yum!!

I also feel like I'm still stuck here at work, doing this crappy job for a crappy wage. The other day we did a 'focus group' where they asked what was keeping us with the company, and I said I stay because if I need to work only 5 hours a week, I can. Then, if I want to work full time, I can. I'd love to somehow work from home though, or start up a business, I just don't know what it is yet. I feel there's a distinct lack of 'indie-friendly' wedding stuff in Aus. I feel that the idea of the 'perfect wedding' is still really big and if you want a left-of-center dress, you'll struggle to find it... Or if you want to get married outside somewhere you have to know somebody with land.. Maybe I need to learn to sew... that being said, wedding dresses probably require a bit of work, and a short course in dress making mightn't be quite enough!!! I'll keep thinking on it- maybe I'm just disappointed in what I've found so far.