I love all my cookbooks, but if I had to pick a favorite, the one this recipe hails from is it. Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook comes from one of the gals behind the Skinny Bitch franchise, Kim Barnouin. It’s a great follow up to the Skinny Bitch in the Kitch cookbook in that it continues the healthy, simple theme of the first book, but expands to include a lot more recipes that are just slightly more involved. This is easily the book I use most often in my kitchen and I’ve had really good experiences with everything I’ve made from it.

This particular recipe is nearly as quick and simple to throw together as the frozen vegetable fried rice from TJ’s I featured a while back. I found it quite tasty, but next time I think I’ll throw in a few more veggies and maybe even a little more garlic. I also think this could benefit from cooking one or two tablespoons of shoyu into the mix in addition to or instead of serving it with shoyu on the side. The flavor that added seemed important enough not to be optional.

Eggless Fried Rice
Recipe Courtesy of Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook

Ingredients

2 tbs Sesame oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup firm tofu, drained and crumbled
2 tbs chopped green onions (white and light green parts)
1 cup corn, fresh or frozen
1 cup snow peas, cut in half
2 cups cooked brown rice
salt and pepper, to taste
2 tsp sesame seeds, for garnish
Teriyaki sauce or shoyu, for serving

Directions

• Heat the oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat
• Add garlic and tofu and saute for 30 seconds
• Add green onions, corn, snow peas and stir-fry about 3 minutes
• Add the rice and cook an additional 5 minutes
• Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Garnish with sesame seeds and serve with teriyaki or shoyu

Yield: Serves 4

Here’s another common weeknight meal around our house. Also another appearance by a vegan superstar straight out of the frozen section at TJ’s. Meet Trader Joe’s Frozen Vegetable Fried Rice. We are fans.

In one bag you’ve got your rice and a vegetable mix that includes corn, carrots, peas…and a few other things I can’t completely recall at the moment. All we do is brown some tofu, add the mix, a few more servings of frozen veggies (I usually add more peas and some shiitakes) a little Shoyu and some Sriracha – donezo.

Recently I discovered some super yummy frozen vegan spring rolls from Ling Ling as well, so we’ve started eating these with this meal too. Lil’ hint: I find these are better if you bake them a smidge longer (5 minutes or so).

And that concludes this episode of “Busy Vegan.” See ya’ll next time!

Veggie Fried Rice

Ingredients

1 Bag Trader Joe’s Vegetable Fried Rice
1-2 tbs roasted peanut oil (or flavorless oil, whatever you prefer)
7 oz extra-firm tofu, cubed
Additional frozen veggies, to taste
1-2 tbs Shoyu or soy sauce
Sriracha to taste (optional)

Directions

• Place tofu on a clean towel between two plates. Stack a few heavy books on the top plate and press tofu for 1/2 hour, turning once.*
• Remove rice mix and frozen veggies from freezer
• Slice tofu into cubes
• Heat oil in a large skillet or wok over medium-high heat.  Add tofu and cook until golden, turning to brown all sides evenly
• Add rice mix, veggies and shoyu to pan with tofu and stir-fry for several minutes, according to package directions
• Add desired amount of Sriracha and stir-fry for 1-2 minutes longer, remove from heat and serve with additional Sriracha

*This step is optional – as it does make this meal slightly more time-consuming to prepare – but pressing first is a good way to get really flavorful tofu. It will still cook up without being pressed, and still be tasty, but you’ll likely need to cook it longer to get it to brown if you don’t press first.

Yield: Serves 2-3