Tangling with Tofu

Sometimes you just get bored with eating beef or pork or chicken.  So I had a great idea to involve some tofu in my meals.  About six months ago I made a tofu dish and enjoyed it.  Ever since, I have been telling myself to look up tofu recipes and get going.  Finally, I just bought some tofu.  I figured that if it was staring me in the face every time I opened the refrigerator then I would eventually do something with it (hopefully not throw it away because it expired).  Well, it worked!  I finally baked some tofu.

When baking tofu the first thing you have to do is press it.  It has been sitting in liquid since packaging and apparently you have to dry it out.  How do you know when you are done pressing?  I have no idea...I couldn't find that information online so it must not matter too much.  Here is my set up:

After pressing, I cut it up.  That was the easy part.

All laid out and waiting to be baked.

Bake until golden brown.  It was very hard to tell in the moment whether they were golden brown or not.  Looking at the pictures it is easy to see.  It took about 40 minutes to bake.  I tossed them a little too for baking evenness.  

I used 3/4 of the tofu in the chicken stir-fry I made.  My goal with including tofu is not to go vegetarian; it is simply to include a different source of protein.  Here is my stir fry without tofu.  I threw in a lot of spinach because it is good for you.  Yum, yum.  

Finished dinner: chicken stir fry with tofu.  For those of you who are wondering, I don't make a sauce for my stir fry.  I just fry it in olive oil, seasoning, and water.  I told my husband it was chicken tofu and he said, "huh?"  That's because the tofu and the chicken were the same color and about the same size pieces!  He was okay with it though.  The rest of the tofu I saved and had on a salad a few days later.  Now that I have made something with baked tofu I can say that I'm not sure I'm going to jump on the bandwagon right away.  Every now and then, sure, but not all the time.