Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Josie's Plant Protein Packed Pad Thai

Josie was supposed to have soccer practice this evening, but they cancelled it due to sprinkles. It was so strange because we've had practice in pouring down rain before so Josie was heart broken not to be able to play "soccer in the rain" (she even made up a song about it on the way to the field). To appease my disappointed daughter, I asked her to make dinner with me tonight and it was her choice what to cook. She chose pad thai.
 
 She started with peppers. Our neighbor, Roger, is so generous and brings us tomato plants, herbs, and peppers plants in the spring and this fall he brought us cayenne peppers from his garden. He put them on a string for easier storage. So thoughtful!
 Here is a motion shot. Josie loves Roger's peppers and wanted to use four, but I talked her down to three.
 We diced the peppers and a red onion and started to saute them with the garlic in a bit of olive oil to begin our sauce. I've posted about pad thai probably dozens of times so you all know I wing it each time. Josie loves to dice and throw ingredients into the pot.
 Josie also picked some tomatoes, and two of the littlest red bell peppers (see one in the top left-hand corner) I've ever seen, from our garden. We sliced them up and threw them in.
 I don't like to use sugar so I usually use dried figs or molasses in my pad thai. Tonight I used dried apricots.
 After I took this picture, I added tamarind paste, peanut butter, a bit of leftover salsa from the refrigerator, tamari, lime juice, tomato paste, and cooking water from the veggies I steamed.
 We soaked the brown rice noodles in warm water while we lightly fried some tofu and crumbled tempeh. By the tofu/tempeh part Josie had wondered away and Rob was home from work to scald it while I pureed the sauce.
 Josie proud of her vegan pad thai with broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, tofu, tempeh, and crushed cashews.
I need to go snuggle and read books with the kids so I won't look up the nutritional info, but I'm guessing this is pretty protein-packed. To make it even higher and for a little change, I sometimes make it with quinoa instead of rice noodles.

5 comments:

KBH said...

And gluten-free! Huzzah!!!

coldandsleepy said...

Ha ha ha... I did a double take at the first picture of Josie with the peppers because I thought she was holding a toy squid. Which would have been weird to see in MoFo but you never know...

Thanks for sharing your recipe! It looks delicious!

VeganLinda said...

KBH, We often do an accidentally gluten-free meal. In fact most of our faves are, but I never think about it until we are eating. :-)

Coldandsleepy, That would be weird! :-) I almost posted the pictures from yesterday's homeschooling day with live snakes, but didn't.

Unknown said...

I love pad thai and never thought to make it at home, I love this post because its looks much easier than I thought! yippee thanks for that!

VeganLinda said...

Courtney, Super easy to make and you can play with it to your tastes or make it healthier or not. :-) It is one of our go to easy meals.