OK, even I am rolling my eyes at the title of this recipe. Quinoa fried rice with tofu – can we get any more hippity dippity healthy food blogger over here?
I’m sorry, but I’m that girl. The one who loves tofu and is using a Peruvian grain/seed to make an Americanized, pan-Asian dish.
Sue me. It’s delicious.
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The final wedding countdown is on! 12 days, you guys. TWELVE DAYS.
Nate and I were in Atlanta this weekend at our friends Sara and Anthony’s wedding. Sara and I got engaged right around the same time, and were checking with each other as we planned our weddings to make sure we picked different dates. So all year, I’ve known that we were flying to Atlanta for their wedding, and then ours would be just around the corner. Being there this weekend made our wedding seem SO REAL!
Not to mention the fact that they had the most beautiful wedding ever. It was at her parents’ house (an old horse farm), very Southern rustic, very DIY. It was absolutely perfect, and I can only hope I’ll look half as overjoyed as I walk down the aisle as my lovely friend did! Except I know I’ll look terrified instead. I remember distinctly from my sister’s wedding the feeling of not being able to control my facial muscles as I walked down the aisle because I was so nervous. The chance of that happening at my own wedding is preeeetty much 100%. I will be clinging to my dad for dear life!
I was crossing my fingers that I’d be going through a quiet spell at work in the weeks leading up to the wedding, to give me a little spare time to take care of last-minute wedding details. Instead, pretty much the opposite is true. Isn’t that always the way things work? Everyone is being super understanding, and I’m trying to stay focused and not take advantage too much. Because of that, easy salads like this are going to be our best friends over the next week or so!
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My brain is exploding with Asian flavors recently, in case you haven’t noticed. Tofu and sesame and ginger, oh my!
Well, no tofu in this one. That was Monday. Today we mostly have a whole lotta avocados!
This recipe was actually inspired by the Asian slaw stuffed avocados I posted last week. Between taking pictures, I was pouring leftover liquid from the slaw over the bits of avocado I’d scooped out when it hit me – ASIAN GUACAMOLE. I googled it immediately and while I wasn’t the first one to think of it, that’s practically impossible anyway. I was just looking for validation that this idea that had come out of my brain wasn’t going to be disgusting. Usually, if I google a recipe idea and get no results, it means 100,000 bloggers have tried it before me and decided it wasn’t worth posting about.
That is definitely not the case here. And while I’m not the first one in the history of mankind to make an Asian guacamole recipe, I bet your friends will be pretty impressed with your creativity when you show up at a party with this.
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Well well well, what do we have here?
Lettuce filled with tofu, that’s what. Can you get more vegan?
Well, maybe if I had also incorporated kale and quinoa. Then these could be eeeven more granola.
As it is, I feel like just the idea of tofu turns some people off. But no longer, because just LOOK at this tofu:
No matter your general feelings on tofu, come on. This stuff looks good.
This is definitely a tofu recipe for tofu haters.
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When it comes to clothes shopping, I have a cardinal rule: if it isn’t going to be your new favorite thing, don’t buy it. It means you don’t really like it that much.
If it’s just OK now in the store, how is it going to look with a few wrinkles when you’ve waited a bit too long to fold it? Are you really ever going to choose it over all your other clothes to wear on a given day? Maybe… but probably not.
If you’re considering buying it in three colors, on the other hand, you probably have yourself a winner. Hold off on the other two colors until you make sure you like the first one, though.
Blog recipes are a lot like that, too. If you’re just so-so on a recipe you came up with, you might not want to recommend it to everyone you know (and even more people you don’t) on the internet. You’ve got to be obsessed with it, or it’s not worth posting about.
That’s pretty idealistic, of course. Not every recipe I post is my new favorite thing, but I try to follow my own rule as much as I can. And I get pretty excited about my end-of-year fail posts, too, so I’m never afraid to relegate a recipe to the fail pile. As I scrape it into the trash, I dream up something sarcastic to say about it in December.
Luckily, this one is far from the fail pile. It’s more in the which-other-two-colors-should-I-buy-it-in category. In fact, I liked this recipe so much that I made a spin-off that I’ll post for you next week :)
Come on, if these avocados were a summer dress, wouldn’t you want to buy three of them?!
I know I would. These avocados look like a party, and I love a dress that looks like a party.
Anyway, I wasn’t sure these avocados were going to make it to the blog when I started out. Experience has shown me that cabbage and avocado do not make a great combination of textures. But for some reason I couldn’t get the idea out of my head, so I decided to give it a try anyway. I was glad to prove myself wrong! The sesame and ginger flavors of the slaw are AH-mazing with the avocado, and the texture is good, too. The secret is just to shave the cabbage very thinly with a mandolin.
Time to put that lazy little gadget to work!
Between shredding the cabbage and onion with a mandolin and pitting the avocados, this recipe is fraught with opportunities to lose a finger. If I ever go down a digit, I’m convinced that a really snug avocado pit will be to blame. Or a butternut squash… gah, those things are the worst. If I worked in a restaurant, I’d end up in the ER every night.
For the record, I didn’t have any near brushes with nine-finger-ness while making this recipe. I just always have to hold my breath while pitting avocados.
Anyway, these stuffed avocados make a perfect light lunch with toast or another side. I also got to thinking about serving them at a party, and decided that most guests wouldn’t want to eat an entire half of an avocado. Enter: avocado slaw crackers!
A thin slice of avocado and a little mound of slaw atop a sesame or rice cracker. They are so colorful and so tasty… perfect crunchy little bites! I think you’ll impress your guests if you ever serve these.
I used 34 Degrees sesame crisps for these. I’ve mentioned 34 Degrees before because they are my favorite. They’re so different from any other cracker, and people always love them. The folks at 34 Degrees were nice enough to send me a few boxes of crackers after I gushed about them in this post. Let’s just say they’ve gone to good use!
OK, one final side note: I’m running a half marathon tomorrow! A race on a Thursday?! Weird, I know. It’s actually a Utah holiday (Pioneer Day) that many businesses are closed for. The city does fireworks and a parade, and holds a 10K, half marathon, and full marathon along the parade route. The street closures cut my neighborhood off from downtown and make it pretty hard to get to work, so this year I decided to not even try. Instead I’ll be waking up at the crack of dawn in the middle of the night to bust my butt 13.1 miles down a canyon and through downtown Salt Lake. Yep, I picked another downhill race! I’m hoping for a fun long run and maybe even a new PR. Wish me luck?
Now go make these avocados! And remember my sage advice next time you’re in the dressing room debating a new purchase. Hah! Kidding… kind of.
