Tofu Jambalaya

Well, it's time for another delicious vegan lunch where I have tried to be a good boy and limit the amount of fat & simple carbs so as to facilitate the loss of 40 or more unwanted pounds. Today's lunch was actually inspired by a recipe over at SusanV's Fatfree Vegan Kitchen. I had all intentions of making this from scratch last night using the recipe, but I ended up taking the easy way out and using some storebought items to help me cook something similar with a little less work. I would still like to try SusanV's recipe though because I am sure it tastes quite a bit different (i.e. even better?) than what I ended up making.

I just went to the store and picked up a box of Zatarain's Jambalaya mix. The rice and all of the spices & seasonings are there already in the box and all I had to do was boil some water and dump it in. I think the box calls for adding some oil or a couple of tablespoons of margarine, I really don't know if it did or not because I didn't read the instructions that well, just the ingredients, but it didn't matter because I never added that extra fat anyway when I cooked something like this from a box. And I'm definitely not going to start now that I'm trying to lose some weight.

I didn't plan ahead and freeze my tofu, but I did press it a little bit before I steamed it, just to get some of the excess liquid out of it. Since I hadn't frozen it, and it was still a little fragile, I was afraid to just stir it up into all of the rice while it cooked. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, in addition to the water that I cooked the rice in I also poured in a can of diced tomatoes with chilis. YUM! So, back to the tofu, to keep it cubed up as much as possible and not break it all up, I steamed it separately in one of those steamer/strainer things that you put down in a big pot of boiling water. I sprinkled the tofu with a bunch of cajun seasonings that come already mixed up in a big shaker. I threw it all together at the end and there you have it. It tastes really good, although the Zatarain's Jambalaya Mix tastes more like just plain old Spanish Rice to me, which is still tasty. Maybe that's my fault since I added the can of tomatoes & chilis. Oh well, it doesn't matter, it's delicious.

I brought along some Black Beans in the other large container. I picked up a different brand and got one that actually came from Mexico because I figured it might taste better than just the plain old store brand. I was right. These are much better than the canned Black Beans that I usually buy. I did give the ingredient list a quick look though just to make sure that they hadn't put any pork fat or anything like that in there. Luckily they hadn't. I think I will buy this brand from now on. I don't have the name of it with me right now or I would tell you, but it was in the Mexican food section of the store, there near the canned Chipotles and stuff like that.

To finish filling the lunchbox I just brought some raw carrots and for dessert, some delicious red seedless grapes that just happen to be on sale this week at the local grocer. Maybe it's just because I haven't had grapes in a while, but this batch I bought yesterday seem to be unusually sweet & delicious to me. I really enjoyed them.

So I guess that does it for a healthy vegan lunch for Wednesday. Today was a little busy at work, but I did manage to squeeze my 30 minute walk in during lunch hour. So, so far I am 3/3 for sticking with my goal to get some exercise in every day. I won't report my weight until next Monday, but just since this past Monday (3 days ago) I can tell that I am losing weight, so everything is going good so far, but based on my past dieting experience I always do lose pretty good the first couple of weeks before it settles down to the 1-2 pounds a week phase. So I really enjoy this initial weight loss and hopefully I will have some really good news to report on Monday.

Thanks for reading my blog today and I'll see everybody on Thursday.

P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOE!