It was yet another night last week where I was completely unmotivated to make any dinner. The Orange Sesame Tofu from the night before was a bust, and I had so much of it leftover (and rice too!). What to do, what to do???

Just then, I remembered reading a post on Carrie’s blog for a stir fry with an orange chili sauce and voila! My problem was solved. I took my leftover tofu and rinsed off the congealed orange sauce and patted it dry. Then I cut it up into smaller triangles. Why triangles? Well, Emma loves triangle anything (toast, quesadillas, etc) so, whenever possible, I try to cut things into triangles to make them more appealing to her. I fried the tofu in a nonstick skillet in the teeniest bit of canola oil until it was brown on all sides. I removed the tofu from the pan and added a diced onion, some carrots and a green bell pepper and cooked those until they were almost tender. Then I added some frozen peas and frozen green beans and put the tofu back into the pan. I poured the sauce over the tofu and veggies and let it reduce down.  I used the leftover coconut lime rice as the base, and I topped it all with some sliced green onion, purple basil and mint.  This was SO good (and such a good save for the tofu since my other option would have been to throw it out).

I was totally unmotivated to make dinner one night last week… and I had no idea what to make. I was flipping through ED&BVlooking for inspiration when Dreena’s recipe for Orange Sesame Tofu caught my eye. I had everything on hand and thought it sounded pretty good. To go with it, I also made Dreena’s Coconut Lime Rice and, just because I had some organic green beans in the fridge, decided to also make Dreena’s Lemon-Broiled Green Beans. I followed all recipes exactly, except that I used orange juice in place of the lemon juice on the green beans (since I had a bunch of oranges already juiced).

I like the flavor of the orange sesame sauce on the tofu, but the gelatinous texture was off-putting. I don’t mind that the texture of tofu is a little squishy, but when paired with a squishy, gelatinous sauce, it just didn’t work for me. This was my last favorite part of the meal.

My second least favorite part of the meal was the rice. It wasn’t bad, just kind of blah. I think it’s better paired with a stir fry or curry- anything with a spicy sauce to give it some zing.

My favorite part of the meal was the green bean dish. They were so easy to make and so tasty. I ended up making them again later in the week when my parents came over for dinner.