Recipe: Pasta with Peanut sauce

It's been forever since I've posted a recipe, and since I've recently become re-obsessed with one I made up last year I figured I should share it so all you peanut fans can love it too!

Ingredients
- 1 box of spaghetti (I especially like whole wheat with this, and Barilla pasta plus in particular)
- 1 red pepper sliced into long strips
- 1 medium sized onion, also sliced into thin long strips
- 2 table spoons of butter
- 1/2 cup of peanut butter
- 4-5 TBSP soy sauce
- 4-5 TBSP honey
- 1/3 of a block of extra firm tofu
- olive oil

1. Melt butter into a hot pan. When melted add onions, then about 1 minute later add peppers. Add olive oil to make sure there is enough moisture to cover all the veggies.
2. Around this time start pasta.
3. Before working with your 1/3 block of tofu, let it drain. You can either put it in a strainer and let it sit for several minutes, or you can cheat like me and squeeze it between some paper towels. Then cut into little cubes.
4. When the veggies look like they are 3/4 of the way to being cooked, add the tofu.
5. Once the tofu is added, add the soy sauce, then the peanut butter, then the honey. Stir and remove the pan from heat.
6. When the pasta is done, you'll probably want to put everything into a serving bowl and stir it in there (from my picture you can see I put everything into my pan, and made a huge mess everywhere as pasta flew in all directions).
7. It's important to note that the "sauce" depends largely on how many veggies you put in there and how you want it to taste. I like mine to be on the peanuty sweet side, but others may want it more salty so you would need more soy sauce. I would start with the ingredients here and add more as necessary to your liking.

I think would also taste good with some orange and yellow peppers too and maybe some mushrooms. And if you want to substitute tempeh for tofu you could totally do that, just add the tempeh in when you add the peppers in. And if you want it spicy, add a few dashes of hot sauce!

Enjoy! I know I will be...until I'm so sick of it I don't eat it for awhile!

Apple Tofu Salad

This salad is essentially a take on the Waldorf salad (I had no idea what that was until someone pointed it out to me) and is super easy to make.

You need:
- 1 apple (use a sweet variety like Rome or Red Delicious)
- 1/3 block of extra firm tofu drained
- cranberries
- walnuts
- sunflower & pumpkin seeds
- lemon extract
- crumbled goat cheese

1. Slice apple into tiny pieces (don't peel) and put in a small bowl with a little bit of lemon extract. Toss around to let the lemon extract cover the apple (this helps to prevent it from getting brown, also, if you use a tart kind of apple this will be way too tart and taste horrible).
2. Cut tofu in the same sized pieces as the apple. It is really important you drain the tofu before you use it (whether you do this in a strainer in the sink for an hour or the quick way (by squeezing it a bunch of times with a paper towel), up to you. Just do it). When you add the apple to your salad bowl, put the tofu in the bowl you used before to soak up the rest of the lemon extract left behind.
3. Then mix everything in a salad bowl using as much of all the trimmings as you so desire.