Thursday, July 2nd - Pesto and Leftovers

We're heading out town for the fake long weekend to the Okanagan Valley with some friends to do a wineries crusade, so we wanted to go through our fridge so tonight was leftover or ez pasta.

I save some of my Shaolin takeaway from last night for lunch but in the end I didn't fancy having nuked smelly noodles at work. I wanted to heat them up properly and enjoy them at home. D didn't want noodles again. He felt like pasta. D had some of the pesto I made last week with Garofolo pasta. I had the leftovers from my Shaolin to myself. My Veggie Cumin Hela (Round extruded) Noodles and half of D's Seafood Curry Cutting noodles. I heated it up in a non-stick pan without oil since most chinese noodles have soooo much oil in the sauce and prep that it didn't need it. We ate most of the tofu and seafood the night before so I added some TVP for protein supplement.

TVP is texturised vegetable protein. It comes in mince sized or chunk sized. All you do is add enough boiling water cover and set aside... or at least that's what the instructions say. I never find that the soaking is enough. I prefer to cook it in the water on the stove top for a few minutes until the water is soaked up. It has the chewy texture of say, firm tofu or chicken. In the UK, you can get it in savour flavours or plain. The plain has NO flavour at all. It's all texture. D says it's like chewing on a sponge. I'll admit that it's been a fair amount of time since I've had chicken, but I kinda thought that it was simulating chicken. Maybe not a chicken breast but say a chicken nugget. I like it in a pinch for that little bit of weight to a dish when I don't feel like I've had protein. Before I started seeing D, I definitely wasn't getting regular protein like seafood. I could have gone days on just veg. I started eating quinoa because of that. It's a very high protein grain. So this TVP sold at Choices in the bulk food area is perfect. It's defintely more expensive than it was in the UK and harder to find. It was half the price. Here I've only found it in Choices Markets and not all of them. For awhile, it wasn't always there. I asked the manager and he said that there wasn't enough demand so he would only order it once in a while at the request of one of his regulars and he would come it as soon as it was in stock and bought it all. Now, two years later, it's always there. Yum. I'm glad because even if I were to start eating meat again, chicken and poultry in general would be the last I would have again. Too strong a flavour but the texture was okay.