Multi-Grain Pineapple Stir Fry

Multi-Grain Pineapple Stir Fry

1 1/2 cups medium grain brown rice
1/3 cup quinoa
3/4 cup millet
1 veg. bouillon cube
5 or so cups of water

1-2 Tbsp olive oil
4-5 small crimini mushrooms, sliced
2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced
1/2 red bell pepper, sliced into thin strips
1 cup broccoli, chopped
1/3 cup pablano, chopped (optional - we like it spicy!)
1 cup fresh pineapple, in one-inch cubes (you'll be sorry if you used canned - it's just not the same!)
8 oz of tofu, drained, pressed, and cubed
1 1/2 Tbsp Braggs Liquid Aminos or Tamari
1-2 Tbsp Thai Spicy Sweet Chili Sauce (optional - any kind will work, just make sure it's vegan. You can find this in the Asian foods aisle at your food store or at a local Asian market.)


Prepare the grains by rinsing and then placing them in a rice cooker. Crumble the bouillon cube on top and pour in water. Start your rice cooker and let it work its magic. I will usually lift the lid every once in a while to stir just to make sure it doesn't stick to the bottom. If you don't have a rice cooker, you can make this on the stove, too.

Next, dry fry the tofu in a cast iron or non-stick skillet. Heat the skillet up to med-med high heat. Once it's reached temperature, add the cubes of tofu. Let them sit! Don't play with them other than pressing down or you will end up breaking them. Once the tofu is easy to flip (it comes right off the pan and doesn't stick - if it still sticks it's not ready!), flip it on the other side and follow the same steps. You can dry fry all four sides if you wish - sometimes I'm lazy and just do two. When you're finished, remove from the pan and set aside.

Using the same hot pan, cook the carrots in some olive oil or canola oil, whichever you prefer. Add bell pepper, broccoli, and pablano and a splash of Braggs Liquid Aminos. Add mushrooms after a few minutes. Finally add pineapple and cook until everything is a little browned or charred. Add sweet chili sauce and stir to fully incorporate. Remove from heat.

Your grains should be finished by now - add grains to the bottom of a bowl, top with veggies and a few tofu squares.

Serves 4

Butternut Squash Curry Soba Dinner

On Sunday, J and I went out for a drive and ended up in Scarborough. We'd always known Lois' Natural Marketplace was there, but for some reason we hardly ever go. It's in an area we don't frequent and so it's easy to forget - but boy, we won't forget it now!

Lois' has that distinct health food store smell - vitamins, herbs - I don't know what it is, but every health food store has that same smell. As we wondered the aisles we were dumbfounded but the number of vegan products - many of them products we have never seen at Whole Foods. We walked away with a large bag of Little Lad's Cashew & Date Granola, a small bag of Ener-G's gluten free sesame pretzels, King Soba Pumpkin, Ginger, & Rice Soba noodles, a vegan donut from Holy Donut (who knew they had vegan ones?!), local raw honey, and LizLovely Peanut Butter Chocolate Cookies.

Today, winter decided to hang on and give us one last (maybe?) snow storm. So I decided to take the soba for a test drive and to utilize left over butternut squash from the soup we'd made the night before. The soba was good but not the best I've had. Certainly worth trying. It was a bit more sticky than the buckwheat soba I typically buy and the flavor (pumpkin & ginger) is very very faint and easily masked by spices and veggies. Nonetheless, dinner was tasty and you can try it out using King Soba or any brand of soba you'd like!


Butternut Squash Curry Soba Dinner
1.5 cups butternut squash, cubed
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
1/2 block of tofu, drained & pressed
1/2 yellow onion
1 package King Soba's Pumpkin, Ginger, & Rice Soba
1 tsp freshly grated ginger
1 tsp curry
1/2 tsp coriander
1 cup chopped broccoli
salt & pepper
1/2 to 1 jalapeño, diced
3/4 cup coconut milk
1 scallion/spring onion, chopped (optional)

Preheat oven to 350. Toss butternut squash and carrots in a little olive or canola oil and bake 35-45 minutes, until veggies are tender when poked with a fork.

Cook the soba as instructed. It is important to wash it with cold water afterwards so that the noodles don't all stick together so don't skip this step!

Dry fry the tofu. Set aside.

In a skillet, cook onion in olive or canola oil. Once onion is translucent, add ginger, curry, cardamom, and salt and sauté for 1-2 minutes. Next add broccoli and jalapeño pepper. Add the butternut squash and carrots and sauté for 5 minutes. Add the coconut milk and bring to a simmer for several minutes. Finish by mixing in the soba and topping with scallion.

Serves 3-4

Invest in a tofu press - you will thank me.

I like to cut the tofu into 4ths (the long way) and then cut each quarter in half, and then in half again on the diagonal, forming little triangles. 

Dry frying is one of our favorite ways to prepare tofu. There's no added fat from olive oil and it makes the outside nice and crispy while the inside remains light and fluffy.