Brown Rice with Sweet Potato, Kale, and Baked Tofu

So this was delicious. It's only downfalls related to texture, not flavor. I diced up one whole sweet potato, with the skin on, and roasted it until it was brown and fragrant. The rice was cooked very basically in vegetable broth, although I think I undercooked it a bit in fear of mushy rice. The tofu is a modification of a recipe in The Kind Life, Alicia Silverstone's vegan bible. It was marinated for an hour in a mixture of shoyu (soy sauce), ume vinegar, minced ginger and garlic, crushed red pepper, and a bit of olive oil. I then dumped all of this into an 8x8 pan, marinade included and baked it for about 25 minutes. Then, lightly sauteed kale and mushrooms, the sweet potatoes, and the rice were just stirred together.

Verdict: I need to practice my rice-cooking skills. I'd invest in a rice cooker (apparently a crucial part of the vegan kitchen), but I have no room in my 475 square foot apartment as it is. And the tofu and marinade were definitely delicious, but I think that I should have baked the tofu a bit drier because it was kind of mushy, particularly when stirred in with the rice. The sweet thing about marinating something like tofu and seitan is the ability to reuse the marinate later as a sauce with no worries about raw meat contamination. But the combination overall was pretty delicious. I would probably leave all the parts separated next time, for appearance and for ease of leftover storage. It started looking pretty disgusting on the third day, and it might've been nice to be able to just add the rice to something else of just eat the roasted sweet potatoes like candy.

I'm starting to like this vegan thing...it's not easy, but I do feel better and I'm having a lot of fun experimenting with different proteins, grains and vegetables. I'm also really enjoying reading all of the interesting facts about veganism and all of the substitutes and interesting copycat recipes vegans have created. This really should be a lifelong commitment. And if more people hopped on board, it would negate the hardest part of this lifestyle: eating out. :)