Making Tofu! and ruebens.

I'm tired of putting 'Vegan Mofo Day whatever' up there.  It's not my style.  Anyway, can you believe I've blogged for over 11 days straight?  This is a total anomaly.  But I've been enjoying it, so yay!  Before I tell you about our tofu making adventures, you must bear witness to my very first ever rueben experience.  I have to tell you, the idea of ruebens has never appealed to me.  I don't like sauerkraut, I don't like thousand island dressing, I thought I didn't like rye bread, and I obviously wasn't a fan or corned beef.  But I've seen lots of vegan bloggers talking before about how amazing the vegan rueben is...so I had to try it.  This one comes from the recipe from VWaV.  And what a lovely recipe it is.  This is a mishmash of pics because the finished product pictures last night were no good, but we had them again for lunch today and got some better shots.  Here's the assembly from last night though:

grilled marinated tempeh, pickled cabbage, pickles, avocado, and homemade thousand island all on rye

They were just incredible.  I never in a million years though I would enjoy any of those things together on a sandwich, but something about the combo is just...right.

michael's 'working man's lunch'

Today I added some spinach and a slice of Tofutti mozzarella to mine.

the spinach was awesome, but the cheeze...meh.  that stuff is only good on pizza, apparently

Anyway, in the midst of us eating lunch, we were also making TOFU.  Yes, that's right.  Our very own, homemade tofu.  It was so easy!  After you put the soybeans in the soymilk machine, it does all that work for you.  Here it is in a pot after it was all done brewing (brewing?).

foamy like a latte

But then we realized you're supposed to spoon the foam off, so I did.  At this point, just add the packet of coagulent (came with the machine), stir it in, cover, and let sit for about 12 minutes.  Then you spoon/pour it into the little press (also came with the machine), like so:

just like curds and whey...but SO MUCH BETTER!  up yours, little miss muffet!

Fold the cheesecloth over it, put on the lid, and pressssssss press press.  But be careful about leaving stuff on top of it to press because we had a bit of an incident involving falling spaghetti sauce cans and water being everywhere.

press out as much water as ya can.

Then after a little bit, it looks like this:

i can't believe that this is tofu.  and that we made it.  in our own home.  cool!

And it's delicious!  We added nothing to this batch, just to see what it was like, you know, and it's nutty and yummy and has the consistency of ricotta cheese (which is a little weird, but whatever).  Apparently to get really firm tofu, you're supposed to add 2 packets of coagulent.  Still, this is totally awesome and even the soymilk tasted good without any salt or sugar.  Coming from someone who HATES the taste of plain (and really any) kind of soymilk, this is big.  Plus, Michael ordered 13 pounds of beans for like $18.  13 pounds makes 58 cakes of this size.  That comes out to 32 cents per tofu cake!  And I've been paying $2 for one at the store.  Not that $2 is exorbitant or anything, but hopefully this will save us a load of money.  As long as we don't get lazy about it.  You can also make rice milk with this thing, just by rinsing rice 3 times and then pressing the button.  Voila!  Rice milk!  

So, all in all, this soymilk maker is fabulous, and the tofu we made is awesome, and ruebens are good.  Also, is there nothing better in this world than nutritional yeast (plus some garlic powder and some pepper) on popcorn?

the answer is, no.  there is not anything better than this.

If you're wondering why so much of this is underlined...I have no idea.  There isn't even an underline button on my toolbar.  Blogger sucks.