Thrifty Tofu Thai Curry with Brown Rice

The mission of this blog is two-fold. 1. I want my husband and son to enjoy my cooking. 2. I want to get the good feeling that comes with knowing that I'm doing my best for them nutritionally. The challenge is that they tend to really like the kind of food that is linked to diabetes.

For the time being at least, I need to add a third mission. I need to be thrifty. I have somehow got quite emotionally attached to a '91 Honda Accord named Frank. Today, I took Frank to the shop to get a new timing belt  - which cost about $650. The other thing that I love really a lot is my son, and on Tuesday, we're getting him fitted for braces. After the down-payment, I need to make two years of monthly payments that are set at just the right level so that I can actually afford it, and so do not feel justified in saying no, but that it also uses up as much of my available income as possible. The result of these developments is that I am temporarily and voluntarily quite poor. I need the next few family meals to be cheap, like, really cheap. When I headed out to the supermarket today, I didn't know what I was going to make for dinner, but I didn't want to spend more than $10, and preferably closer to $5, but I still wanted to make it tasty and healthy.

This story's getting way too long, the bottom line is I made tofu. They sell 16 oz of tofu at my supermarket for 99 cents! 99 FUCKING CENTS! Do people know about this? 16 oz of tofu can easily feed three. What the fuck people!? Why didn't anyone tell me about the tofu!? I only looked at it by mistake. Jesus wept.

I like tofu, tofu is healthy, and I can easily afford tofu.  I had a jar of Trader Joe's yellow Thai curry at home and I had rice in the cupboard, so I got 99cents of tofu, a red pepper and onion and one yam and I was sorted. It probably didn't even come to $3.  Now obviously, using a jar of curry sauce makes this meal a massive cheat and not truly worthy of a blog post, but as I have never cooked with tofu before, this is a special case.

The rice I had was brown rice, and I do not have a proud history with brown rice. I decided to google for some pointers rather than just wing it. I followed this advice, and for the first time in recent history, my brown rice was pretty good. I rinsed the rice in cold water, I boiled a large pan of water, added the rice, and boiled it for 30 mins, I kept topping the pan up with more water if it got low. After 30 mins, I drained the rice and let it steam in the pan for ten minutes. I added a little soy and some salt and fluffed it with a fork. It wasn't life changing, but it was fine. 

For the tofu, I was just winging it. I heated oil in a wok, added two cloves of garlic and tipped in the tofu, which was cut into cubes. My plan was to get the outside a little crispy while keeping the inside soft. I added a tiny bit of soy. I wanted to fry it fast, but the tofu was sold in water, and it had held onto some of that liquid which dribbled out of the tofu, so it was more boiling that frying. I poured everything into a sieve and then put the tofu back in the pan. The second time I started to get some success, the outside of the tofu was starting to get a little crispy, but I was worried about over-cooking the inside, so I stopped it there and had half-crispy tofu. IT WAS DELICIOUS! NINETY-NINE CENTS OF PURE DELICIOUS! 

I then put a sliced onion in the pan and fried that in olive oil until it became translucent, then added the red pepper and a sweet potato (yam) sliced into little cubes. I fried it all together for maybe 5 minutes and then added the sauce. I simmered the sauce and the veggies together until the potatoes were cooked and then added the tofu just before serving.

It was freaking yummy and tofu only costs 99cents. 

Tofu Thai Curry with Brown Rice