Happy Tuesday and Happy October 1!
I hope you enjoyed that fabulous alliteration of a title. If you haven’t noticed from previous posts, alliterations are my favorite literary device, so I try to use them as often as possible. They’re just too fun to pass up.
I cannot believe it’s already October…how time has flown! All of these tests I’ve been taking have been titled “Midterm” or “Midterm 1,” which slightly freaks me out. I feel like the semester just started and here we are mid term already? I don’t know about this nonsense.
Let’s switch directions to food, my happy place.
After the past couple of stressful, too-busy-to-do-anything weeks, I was wiped clean of all my produce and yummy, healthy foods. It was about time for me to restock. After my exam on Thursday evening, I went to Kroger and spent about an hour and a half roaming the aisles, looking at everything that caught my eye and of course, every nutrition label. As much as I love going to the grocery store with a friend, sometimes it’s nice to have no time constraints, to not feel pressured to rush for anyone. That is exactly what I was feeling last Thursday evening; enough so, that I spent almost double that of my usual grocery bill.
Among the copious amounts of cool food I bought, I picked up some tempeh. I had tempeh for my first time during my visit to Boone a couple of weeks back, and loved it! It was the closest thing to meat I’ve had since making the switch over to veganism.
So, here goes my tempeh experiment.
I looked up a few ways to go about cooking my tempeh, but I knew I could figure it out on my own. No biggie.
I also needed to use my spinach up, so adding a salad into the mix seemed like a good idea.
Here’s what I had to work with. The packaging also provides you with a description of tempeh if you are as clueless as I was a few weeks ago.
I began with cutting the tempeh block into smaller pieces, then placing them in my marinade. My marinade consisted of soy sauce, sesame oil, sesame seeds and ginger sesame sauce. I let sit for 20-25 minutes, but for future reference, I should have let it sit for longer (1+ hours) and kept it in a plastic bag to conceal all flavors.
I transferred the tempeh to a sautéing pan smeared with coconut oil. I turned the heat to medium-low and let simmer with a close eye on it for about 20 minutes.
I then covered the pan with a lid to speed up the cook time, as my tummy was getting a little impatient.
While I was waiting, I created a peanut-soy dressing for my salad. This included PB2, water and soy sauce.
Finally the tempeh was browned to my satisfaction and was ready to add to my lovely asian-style salad.
Atop a bed of spinach leaves, pickled ginger, and almonds, I laid my tempeh, along with my peanut-soy dressing and a sprinkle of sesame seeds.
The ginger and the asian-seasoned tempeh were perfect compliments of each other, a winning combination.
My Asian Tempeh Salad
Ingredients
Tempeh=
- Tempeh
- Soy sauce
- sesame oil
- Sesame ginger marinade
- Coconut oil
- sesame seeds
Salad=
- Fresh spinach leaves
- Pickled ginger
- Raw almonds
- Sesame seeds
Dressing=
- PB2
- Water
- Soy sauce
Today, I whipped up an Asian Tempeh Salad Wrap with the tempeh I had leftover.
Using the new Ezekiel Sprouted Grain Tortillas I bought, I whipped up the salad I had last night almost to a tee.
I microwaved the tortilla for about 2 minutes, as Ezekiel products are always fresh frozen. I then heated up the tempeh and after, placed the tempeh, pickled ginger, spinach, almonds, sesame seeds (and added carrots) and a little sprinkle of PB2 onto the tortilla.
I wrapped it all up and it was good to go. I think I even preferred the salad in the wrap. The Ezekiel tortillas are fabulous. You can tell their quality when you’re eating them. I loved getting all the flavors from all the ingredients at once.
I highly recommend trying tempeh if you haven’t already. It’s a great, wholesome source of protein and we all need variety in our diet, vegan or not, so might as well give it a shot.
I definitely intend on experimenting further with tempeh, so I’ll keep you posted!
Have a fabulous rest of your Tuesday, everyone! Chow.