Baked Spicy Orange Ginger Tofu, Mac & Shews and Avocado Salad

Date: 03/17/2011
Cook:  Jen G.
Menu: Baked Spicy Orange Ginger Tofu, Mac & Shews, Avocado Salad; Chocolate Cake with Mint Frosting

I was craving comfort food and had heard many good things about Mac and Shews, so I decided to try my hand at it.  Not familiar with it?  Its basically mac and cheese in which the creamy sauce is a fabulous combination of soaked cashews, lightly sauteed onions and garlic and a roux.  It was very very good.  It is definitively not sauerkrauty, though making this DID serve as a reminder to me that around minute 7 of making a roux, I generally begin thinking to myself that I might have something better to do with my time than push grease and flour around a pan for 15 minutes of my life.  But I persevered.  I saw later in the comments to the recipe that someone had added truffle oil to theirs and that sounds like it would be delicious.  I added boring old spinach to mine.

I wanted to make some tofu, too, and I chose Orange Ginger Baked Tofu.  The marinade made a lot of sauce and I ended up baking it for WAY more time than it called for--like maybe by an hour.  I also added some chili oil to make it spicier (which definitely occurred!).  I thought that it was really delicious.

I wanted a nice blob of green on everyone's plates -- it WAS St. Patrick's Day after all -- so I crafted an avocado salad very similar to the one found here.  My parents had generously brought us two boxes of gorgeous looking and tasting avocados recently so I was happy to make such a delicious salad.

For dessert, I baked a wacky cake and sent small containers of green mint frosting (the frost-yer-own situation was because the cake hadn't entirely cooled when it was time to deliver).

My son and I hopped on our bikes to deliver this meal and it was really pleasant as it was a very pretty and warm early spring evening.  It felt lovely to be pedaling dinner to people we appreciate.