Meatless Monday – Curry Simmer

This “Meatless Monday” nothing there’s complicated happening here…especially since I wrote this post last week the night before we left on vacation. This is the “quickie” meal for you…nothing fancy, but delicious just the same. Sometimes quick and easy are just what is called for in our house. This night, as I was trying to get packed and organized for our trip, I decided to make a a curry simmer of veggies and tofu over grains along with a simple salad. You can find the ingredients at Trader Joe’s, so this post is sort of a “Lita’s Loves” post too.

Ingredients:

Grains:

• ½ package Trader Joe’s Harvest Grains Blend
• 1 vegan vegetable bouillon cube
• 1 tablespoon vegan butter

1. Put one vegan bouillon cube in a saucepan add 1 ¾ cups waters water and bring to a boil.
2. Add 1 tablespoon butter and 1 ¼ cups Harvest Grains and return to a boil.
3. Lower heat, cover and simmer for 10 minutes.

Curry Simmer:

• 1 tablespoon Safflower oil
• 1 Jar Trader Joe’s Curry Simmer Sauce
• ½ onion
• Approx. 8 mushrooms
• 1 package firm tofu

1. Drain and press tofu to remove excess water.
2. Chop onion
3. Slice mushrooms
4. Heat safflower oil in a pan on med-high heat
5. Add onions and cook approx. 5 minutes
   
6. Add mushrooms (don’t crowd the mushrooms!!! – name the movie)
   
7. Add the tofu
   
8. Add the simmer sauce and 1 cup water
9. Let simmer on med-high heat approx. 5 minutes

Salad:

Basically, whatever salad ingredients you have…but here’s what I had on hand.

• ½ bag Trader Joe’s Les Salades du Midi (butter lettuce and radicchio)
• 2 generous handfuls of chopped green cabbage
• ¼ cup green onions (or more if you love them like me)
• 3 radishes sliced
• approx. 14 cherry tomatoes sliced in half
• 2 pieces hearts of palms, drained and sliced

1. Toss all together and add your favorite dressing…tonight mine was an Italian dressing I had made earlier in the week and still had some left in the bottle.

Truly, this meal can take on many, many variations. What I’m sharing is just ideas to spark your imagination. You can also follow this recipe as I’ve written in here for a no-brainer meal – I like no-brainer meals after a day at work.

Changes you could make:

• Using couscous or rice instead of the harvest grains blend
• Adding other veggies to the simmer sauce instead of or in addition to the mushrooms
• Making the salad with whatever you have available

My quickie recipe nights at home vary greatly all the time depending on what’s sitting in my cupboard. The key for me when making a quickie meal at home is that it has to be faster (and hopefully tastier and healthier) than running out to pick up something. This whole meal was started and on the table within 25 minutes – including pausing to take photos.

I’d love to hear about any other quick meal ideas you have too.

Eat well and Enjoy,
~ Lita