Remembering Loved Ones

Yesterday was Veteran's Day so Parker had the day off from school. We didn't get a chance to do our Day of the Dead tradition on the actual Day of the Dead since it was terribly rainy, I was recovering from an illness, and Parker was at school and he didn't want to miss our Day of the Day ritual. I figured Veteran's Day was a good day as any to remember those in our lives who are no longer with us. I didn't take my phone or camera though so you'll have to check out DotD 2010, DotD 2008, and DotD 2007. This year we went to Transitions Resale Store to donate some clothes and talked about how it benefits the Center for Women in Transition - which my mom was very involved in for many years. We made our usual stop at the Y Eatery for pad thai and talked about how my mom worked in the building and loved the tofu pad thai. This year I brought other food from Common Ground Co-op to make their lunch more of a meal. They ate raspberries, almond yogurt, and apples with their pad thai. We ran into several people we know and the kids were so eager to explain about their dead grandmother and how we remember her every year. I'm not sure anyone understood. The kids really look forward to talking about my mom and this year my grandfather too, hearing stories from my childhood, Parker talks about what he can remember from his two years with my mom still alive, etc. Each of them have their own ideas and feelings about death. I am lucky to get to share such moments with them. I adore them so much and their depth never ceases to amaze and inspire me.

I bought refrigerated silken tofu accidentally (I thought I was buying our regular firm tofu, but put the wrong number in the system) through our buying club a month or so ago. We don't use silken tofu often so I've been looking for ways to use it up. I finally finished it off last night on Vegan on the Cheap's peanut sauce. This is my first recipe to make from this cookbook. I tested some of the recipes for Robin, but I realized recently my sister had the cookbook and it was still at our house from the year she lived with us...bonus! 

Roasted beets, brown rice, garlicky kale and turnip greens, peppery tofu, and peanut sauce.

We serve some variation (this one is mustard greens and the kids used a tahini sauce) of this meal at least once a week and two of the kids named it their favorite meal in the interviews I did with them for VeganMoFo. It really is a meal we can all enjoy each time and it never gets old. I used the rest of the silken tofu (the sauce didn't call for an entire package) on a chocolate smoothie (cocoa powder, rolled oats, silken tofu, vanilla soy milk, dried cherries, dried figs, and flax seeds) which was decadent enough to be called dessert, but really full of healthful things. I based this on a Healthy Chocolate Milkshake video from Dr. Greger's site.