TLT Sandwich For a Cool, Rainy Day Lunch

TLT stands for Tofu, Lettuce and Tomato. This sandwich is extra special because of two factors: 1. it is made with mostly local ingredients; 2. its extra small on baguette bread to make it fun to eat for everyone. I buy locally made tofu at my farmer's market thanks to Cara and Corn at Wintergreens - a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). No, this is not raw, but it is vegetarian/vegan (no animal products used). If you don't eat bread, you can sandwich this between two pieces of romaine lettuce for a nice fresh taste. The hardest part of this sandwich is baking the tofu which I usually do once per week and keep it for the week. Here's my marinade and how to bake the tofu:

Marinade

1/4 c shoyu soy sauce or wheat free tamari (for all you gluten-free folks)
1 Tbsp rice vinegar
1 tsp maple syrup or agave nectar
3 or 4 dashes of toasted sesame oil
1/4 cup water
Mix all together and pour onto 1/2 inch thick slabs of tofu in a baking dish with tofu laid out in one layer. Allow to sit for about 5 minutes (or up to an hour for a deeper flavor). Drain off the excess marinade and bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees fahrenheit for 20 minutes. Then turn tofu over, coat the tops with more marinade (don't allow extra marinade to lay on the bottom of the dish or it will burn giving the tofu a burnt flavor), and place back in the oven for 20 minutes. Done!

For the TLT:

Thinly slice a baguette and gently toast the slices. While the bread is toasting, slice a tomato and set out the lettuce and avocado. When toast is ready (usually in about 4 minutes), spread avocado on both pieces of toast like mayonnaise. Then layer on the baked tofu, tomato and lettuce. Top it off with the other piece of avocado-laiden toast and enjoy. Even little hands enjoy this sandwich.

(Tip: instead of lettuce, you can use sprouts in the sandwich, especially sunflower sprouts for some extra nutrients and sproutier flavor. Kids really like sunflower sprouts!)

(Tip 2: if avocado is not a favorite, try hummus! It'll give it a different taste, but still delicious with extra protein.)

We served this with raw, fresh shelled english peas grown by Hepworth Farms (a local Hudson Valley organic veg farm by cult hero Amy Hepworth). Little hands love to shell their own peas.

Now to come up with a raw version of this to keep us humming...hmmmmmm

Keep your day bright and beautiful

Sushi Night!

Tonight's dinner was quite last minute. I opened the fridge to see what was inside. Lucian, my 3 1/2 year old, saw his favorite salad dressing - a locally made japanese ginger dressing. He asked for salad with "Kazu's dressing" on it. What mom would deny THAT?? So, while he was chomping away at his locally grown organic greens from Four Winds Farm, I scoured the fridge for some more sustenance. I found some leftover rice, tofu, an avocado, nori, some soaked almonds, and an orange. I created a sushi bowl for Lucian as he likes it that way and not rolled up. I created a delicious sauce I read about on 101cookbooks.com, but didn't cook it so it was super fast. Here's the sushi bowl which kids seem to devour:

-rice (brown rice preferable for more fiber and nutrients)
-1/2 avocado, thinly sliced
-1 nori sheet, cut into long strips
-firm tofu cut into 5-10 matchsticks

sauce (simplified from original recipe):
juice of 1 orange
2 Tbsp soy sauce
2 Tbsp rice vinegar
1 tsp agave nectar or raw honey, if needed (usually the juice is sweet enough)
mix together and pour over rice.

While the rice was reheating on the stove, I whipped up my Sunny Day At Sea almond pate that I wrapped up into the nori sheets (he tried it and didn't like it - darn).

1 cup almonds, soaked in water a minimum of 4 hours
1 clove garlic
1 tbsp shoyu or tamari (soy sauce)
juice of 2 lemons
2 ribs celery, diced
In a food processor, blend the almonds, garlic, shoyu and lemon juice until it reaches a pate consistency. If you have a Vitamix, try blending it in there or putting the almonds through a homogenizing juicer (in case you have one of those handy if you have a raw food kitchen). Then hand mix in the diced celery. Tastes so much like tuna salad! Makes enough for 4 fat nori rolls (2 servings).

Lay out the pate in nori sheets, add avocado and other veggies like carrot sticks and cucumber sticks and roll up. You can use the above orange sauce as the dip. This is an awesome dinner which can be made in 30 minutes or less if you have the nuts soaked.

If you're not into making nut pate, but love tuna, use tuna salad to make these rolls instead of making a tuna salad sandwich. Just skip the bread and go for the nori which is super high in nutrients including calcium and iron.

Lucian had some vanilla "milk" for dessert. Its an almond-hemp milk I made and added ground vanilla and a handful of dates. Sweet, yummy and full of nutrients. I'm going to freeze some tonight in popsicle molds to have vanilla popsicles tomorrow.