NoMeatPo Week Wrap-Up

Some of you may have noticed a cute little piggy in my sidebar this past week in honor of NoMeatPo week, a challenge set up by the League of Maternal Justice, Green Mom Finds, and BlogHersAct Canada to see if families could reduce their overall meat consumption in the month of January and completely avoid meat for the last week of the month.

Anyhow, this wasn’t much of a challenge here at ChezArtz since, with the exception of a strange foray into cooking a turkey at Thanksgiving, we’ve been vegetarian as a family since, well, before we were even a family! But I wanted to take an opportunity to talk about this topic and to share a good, easy vegetarian recipe that was a hit with the whole family this week.

Matt & I both became vegetarians when we were in college mainly out of a distaste for meat (or, more specifically, for handling it raw and cooking it).  Interestingly, as the years have passed and we’ve done more research on it, it has become a lot less a matter of taste (although as the turkey at Thanksgiving proved, that part of it has not diminished!) and more a matter of world view. Doing any amount of research into the way meat is raised & processed in this country will give you pause to consider your Big Mac just as doing any amount of reading about the environmental impact of industrial-scale agriculture will make the prices at the local farmer’s market seem a little easier to swallow.

So we’re vegetarians because we think it’s healthier for ourselves, for the air we breath, the soil we stand on, and the water we drink. We’re vegetarians because we oppose the politics-as-usual that creates policies that allowed corn until just recently to be sold for less than it could be grown for, that gives our tax dollars to companies that do things the wrong way at the expense of both the consumer and smaller companies that try to do things the right way when it comes to our food. We’re vegetarians because we think it tastes better and we think we can live more sustainably as vegetarians than we could as carnivores.

And with that, I will step down from my soapbox and give you my recipe for Broccoli-Tofu Stir-Fry, adapted from  Moosewood Restaurant Cooks At Home:

Mix the following ingredients in a small bowl and set aside:
2 T garlic chili sauce (the original recipe uses hoisin sauce)
1 2 inch piece of ginger, grated (I added this)
2/3 c water
3 T rice vinegar
3 T soy sauce
1 T cornstarch

Throw a cup of basmati rice in the steamer to cook and then cut up 2 cloves of garlic, 1 small fresh chile, 1 cake of tofu, 1 head of broccoli, and a bell pepper into 1 inch pieces. Heat 2 T oil in a wok over medium heat and fry the garlic & chili for 30 seconds before adding the tofu. Stir fry the tofu until golden, about 10 minutes. Remove the tofu and then add the vegetables and stir fry until just tender, adding 1/3 c lime juice and a little extra water if they start to stick (did I mention that I reduced the oil in this recipe so that it’s Weight Watchers friendly too???).  When the veggies are done, throw in the tofu and the bowl of sauce and cook untl the sauce thickens, about 3-4 more minutes.

Serve over rice. Moosewood suggests topping with peanuts, but I think cilantro or scallions would be good too!