Weekly Eats: Tofu Thoughts

A weekly round up: eats, watches, and reads.  This week was insanely busy on the work front.  I love my job, and normally it's nice about containing itself between 9 to 5, but this week was a brutal exception.  I had some very late evenings this week, two days in a row where I was so late that I not only missed dinner with the fam but also our nightly dog walk.  I'm so happy to finally have a few minutes to chat about it all and fingers crossed hopefully everything is settled down now?

P.S. my day job is a corporate accountant, I count things for a living and I also pay people.  The beginning of the month is when we figure out how much money the company made and anything and everything else anyone could want to know and the beginning of the year is when everybody and their brother wants to do new stuff with their pay.  It's interesting work to be sure, but it's a bit of a load at times.

Anyhoo, in food news I am questioning everything that I have ever been told about tofu.  I've always read that extra firm is the way to go, and freezing and then squeezing all of the liquid out is the secret to soy happiness.  And I'm happy enough with the tofu that I make at home, but I've been on a quest to figure out the difference between my homemade efforts and restaurant tofu.  Lately I've been getting firm instead of extra firm, and the past few times I've made it, I haven't frozen it and drained the life out of it.

Where I'm going with this is this week I made a stir fry with frozen & squeezed tofu and...it's just not as good as non frozen/non squeezed.  Stay tuned as I make future experiments...or better yet if you've already figured it out, link me up to some recipes in the comments.

Breakfasts a.k.a The Usual Suspects

Monday & Friday: breakfast potatoes, salsa, and eggs.
Tuesday & Thursday: breakfast burritos
Wednesday & Sunday: cereal bar, string cheese, fruit
Saturday: toast with eggs and bacon

Lunches
Weekdays: alternated lasagna and tofu stir fry with Pinch of Yum's Korean BBQ sauce.

Weekends: PBJ on Saturday, leftover pizza on Sunday

Dinners
Oh man, here's where you can see the impact of my work schedule.

Monday: worked late, once I got home and smelled mac n'cheese from the menfolk's dinner my brain would not settle for anything else besides a hot dog to go with it.

Tuesday: nothing to see here, worked late and ate office snacks.  My family obviously found something to eat?

Wednesday (date night): you can see me stepping in the sense that I remembered we had chicken bacon ranch burgers in the freezer.  It was miserably cold outside, and hubs had a rough day as well, so instead of grilling I defrosted them in the microwave and cooked them up on the stove.  Sure grilling gives them an extra edge but just a reminder that the stovetop is perfectly fine as well.

Thursday (fend for yourself night): I may need to you keep this dinner a secret from my stepsons.  We keep Costco mini pizzas around for a "better than potato chips" snacking option and that was about as elegant a meal as I could get my head around.  Kalamata olives on the side.

Friday (family meal): yay, I got to leave work on time and hang out with my family and take the dog for a walk and all the little stuff that makes life worthwhile.  The weather was agreeable, so I handed my husband a stack of hamburgers and had him grill them up.

Saturday: party time!!!  We celebrated a certain stepson's birthday.  The menu:

• Appetizers: veggie tray, black olives, and a bag of Doritos served in a crystal bowl because we give elegant parties like that.
• Mains: pizza, fried chicken, and jojos from the place down the street.
• Dessert: Brown Eyed Baker's Copy Cat Dairy Queen Cake (a more indepth look at how I make it is here)

Sunday (family meal): leftover pizza.  The kids did not hate dinner tonight, hm neither did the adults.

Next week's plan: oops, the weekend did kind of get away from me.  We can always fall back on mac n'cheese and our stash of Costco mini pizzas if the going gets tough.

Watching

• Solo viewing: not much time for the TV this week but there's another season of Married at First Sight on Hulu (my favorite questionable reality show) so I'm happy about that.
• Family viewing was epic: On Friday we kicked back and watched Mel Brooks's The History of the World Part I.  Otherwise known as the origin of one of our family's favorite catchphrases: "the jig is up...and gone" 

The kids can be skeptical of our movie choices but they were in to this from the start.  We paused the movie for a snack break and as we were starting back up stepson #1 asked "so can we watch part II after this?"  and we had to break the cruel news to him that part I is all she wrote but let him know that there is a wealth of Mel Brooks out there waiting for him.

Reading
Finished Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, my pick for an even tie on whether the book or the movie was better.  Now what to read next....