Mama Pea’s slow cooker BBQ tofu

One of my favorite blogs to read every day is Peas and Thank You. The fabulous “Mama Pea” has some excellent recipes (which are vegan) on her blog along with photos of her two adorable girls and tons of hilarious prose.

A few weeks couple of months ago, I saw her make tofu in the slow cooker. Since I am always looking for new ways to enjoy one of my favorite protein sources, I decided I had to try it myself!

Plus, I have two slow cookers and they don’t get used nearly enough.

I drained and pressed the tofu and then sort of just broke it apart as I placed it into the slow cooker. Then I poured in some of this!

Then I went to work and let it sit in the slow cooker on “low” for about 9 hours. It’s nice to have dinner cooking for you while you are at work!

I decided to serve it in a pita pocket as a tofu barbecue sandwich.

Mama Pea never disappoints me! I loved it. 🙂 The Annie’s maple BBQ sauce is amazing too!

Later in the week, I had it leftover on a salad.

I might’ve liked it even better the second time.

What is your favorite way to cook tofu?

Wholly delicious

Wednesday was really a surprisingly good day of eats!

For breakfast, I had leftover waffles and half of a pink grapefruit.

Lunch was in two parts: first, I had PB&J on a rye bun. I don’t know what possessed me to do this (because you know rye has a certain flavor) but somehow it turned out good. With brussel sprouts.

And then finished it off with carrots & hummus. I was afraid this wouldn’t fill me up (PB&J rarely does) but somehow it worked today!

I snacked on a Larabar before a dental appointment (and brushed my teeth, ha ha). Then when I got home, I was hungry while making the meal for our Girl’s Night Potluck, so I had a banana to hold me over 🙂

Everything we had this week was really simple, but turned out great!

I once again made Mama Pea’s black bean burgers. I will never get tired of these; they taste great and they are so cheap and easy to make too!

I picked up these rye buns (same one my PB&J came on earlier) at Kroger on Tuesday, after perusing all the choices and ingredients. Most of the white and wheat buns had egg whites, so I was glad to find these. I think they tasted great!

For our side, we had some steamed mixed vegetables. This mix is my favorite, I must be a fan of starchy veggies 😉

But the real star of our show was the topping for the burgers!

The “pico de gallo style” guacamole from Wholly Guacamole was out of this world! Best prepackageg guac I have ever had 🙂

If you’ve ever had the black bean burger at Max & Erma’s, there’s comes with guacamole on it too, which is where I think I must’ve gotten the idea from.

Finally, my plate (plus more veggies afterwards)!

It wouldn’t be girl’s night without wine!

This Glen Ellen pinot grigio was quite tasty! I always like trying new brands I hadn’t heard of.

Courtney said she wasn’t sure what to think since this bottle was pretty cheap (I think $3.99). But sometimes, I think that just makes it taste better 😉

Breakfast and dinner

That is seriously what I should change the name of this blog to, ha ha.

For some reason, once again, I managed to just take pictures of breakfast and dinner.

I started this very cold, icy day with a smoothie! Brrr…

Contains: 1 cup of plain soy milk, 1/2 cup frozen pineapple and 4 frozen strawberries. Yum!

I also had an English muffin with PB&J to go with.

Oh, wait! I forgot about the morning snack 😉

I ate a HUGE carrot and tried a new hummus: Athenos artichoke and garlic. I loved it. Hummus can do little wrong by me though.

Lunch was leftover spaghetti. It was good but you’ve seen it. I love leftovers, it really helps stretch my ingredients plus saves money too.

I ate a Larabar after my workout today but it too escaped my lens.

For dinner, I made yet another version of Mama Pea’s roasted chickpeas. Her original recipe was pumpkin spice and I feel like I’ve messed around with it enough to list the ingredients on here.

Ingredients:

• 1 can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• A few shakes of curry powder
• A few shakes of cumin
• A shake or two of salt
• 1 tbsp Thai Kitchen sweet red chili sauce

Drain and rinse the chickpeas. Add all the other ingredients with them in a bowl and then stir until the chickpeas are coated. Put in the oven at 400 degrees for 15 minutes, stirring around once during cooking.

Voila!

I think these were my favorite so far. I like to combine sweet and spicy flavors I’ve noticed. But I love experimenting with different flavors. It keeps roasted chickpeas interesting!

The rest of my plate contained mixed veggies, a pita pocket and Smart Balance Light.

I was supposed to go to yoga tonight but I ended up staying home and getting a lot of work done including homework (taking online classes makes me forgetful sometimes), cleaning, and baking for tomorrow night (you’ll see soon).

I just snacked on half an English muffin with PB and chocolate chips 🙂

Thank goodness for tea and 9:00 cut off times. I totally could’ve eaten another one of these!

Do you invent recipes or try out ones that others have come up with?

I love following others’ recipes but I can’t wait to make my own someday.