My favortie salad

When I was a junior in college I lived in a small apartment with a vegetarian. She was a wonderful, vibrant friend who showed me so many new and exciting things, one of them being tofu. Although I wasn't a vegetarian at the time, I grew to love tofu. It was that year that I invented my favorite salad. Here's my recipe for Asian Tofu Tomato Salad:


Ingredients:

2 Tbsp olive oil
1/4 block of extra firm tofu
3 Tbsp soy sauce
1 fresh tomato, or 1 cup fresh cherry tomatoes
1 clove garlic (optional)
oil and soy sauce to taste

Its so simple to make. Here's what you do - Put the olive oil in a skillet or wok on med-high heat. Slice up your tofu into bite sized cubes. (A note about tofu - if you drain as much water out as possible before cooking, the tofu will brown better. Wrap the tofu in a clean dish towel and place something heavy on top, like a cook book. Leave it like this for a good 5 minutes or so. This step isn't necessary, but it makes the tofu brown up nicely.) Saute the tofu in the oil until its nice and golden brown.

When your tofu is sufficiently browned, cut up the tomato into whatever shape or size you like. Add the soy sauce and tomato and cook it just until the tomato is limp and warm. If you want, you can add a clove of minced garlic, too.

Spread this tofu over a bed of romaine lettuce. Add extra oil and soy sauce to taste. I love this salad because its nutritious, low calorie, full of vegetarian protein, and best of all its quick and easy to make! As always, you can add your own twist to this delicious salad and ENJOY!

Apple Sauce

I was talking to a friend this week about caning and gardening, and she told me that Paula Red apples are an early apple variety, and are NOW ready to pick! Who knew? So my sister, my son and I went to The Apple Farm in Victor yesterday and picked 18 lbs of Paula Red apples!


I love to make all kinds of things with apples, but as I prepare for the long, fruitless winter ahead I decided to make and can fresh applesauce! I was able to use 8 lbs. of apples to make 9 pints of apple sauce, so keep that in mind when you are planning on how many apples to pick.

I think the easiest, easiest, easiest way to make applesauce is with a Victorio Food Strainer. My parents have one, so I just borrow theirs - however, the Victorio Food Strainer really is an inexpensive and extremely useful tool for making sauces and juices. A new strainer usually runs about $60. I highly recommend picking one up. With the Victorio Strainer, you do not need to peel, core, or even de-stem your apples before cooking them - the strainer does all of that for you. First step, cut your apples. I cut them in half, then cut each half into 4 pieces. Put them in a big pot, add a couple cups of water so the apples won't stick to the bottom of the pot, cover, and put the stove on medium heat,


Let the apples cook for a while - an hour, or so - until they get all mushy and start to fall apart. Depending on the variety of apples you use this shouldn't take long!

When you get your Victorio Strainer it will, of course, come with an instruction manual, so I will spare you all the details of how to use the strainer. But in a nutshell, you dump your cooked apple mixture into the funnel at the top. Turn the crank, and the machine will extrude your fruit through small holes, making a lovely consistency for apple sauce. Any pieces not small enough to squeeze through the holes - i.e. skin, seeds, stems - will come out of the strainer on the other side, and you can later discarded them. Here is the strainer in action:

After that, your apple sauce is finished! SO EASY, right? I put the sauce into jars and cooked them in the pressure cooker. Now I have fresh, natural apple sauce - no sugar or spices added - that will last all winter long.


If you DO NOT have a Victorio Food Strainer and you still want to make apple sauce, it is actually still very easy. You just need to add an extra step to the process. Before you put your apples into the pot on the stove you will need to peel and core them. This is not hard, of course, but definitely time consuming. Cook them on the stove in the same way, and they will just fall apart. You can use a potato masher to finish the job, and TA-DA, fresh, delicious, natural apple sauce for you, too. :-)

HAPPY SAUCE MAKING!