Beyond Rice and Tofu

This week’s Gluten Free Menu Swap theme is zucchini and summer squash and it is being hosted by Scrumptious of In My Box, a blog about how she uses up all the goodies that show up in her weekly CSA box. (CSA = community-supported agriculture. Check this out for more information.) Scrumptious and I would love to be neighbors since we’re always ooing and aahing over each others meal plans. We’d be eating at each others homes all the time. I think we could learn from each other too. Too bad we live 1100 miles apart. Perhaps some day when we have our ‘commune’, we’ll invite Scrumptious to come live with us as we seem to be kindred spirits. (Yes, we dream of our own little co-housing community of like-minded folks with chickens, bees, goats and alpacas. Weird, I know.)

Here at the Beyond Rice and Tofu household, we don’t care for zucchini or summer squash, so we won’t be participating in the theme. Although, we do have quite a few cucumbers to eat – they are in the curcubit family and gourd family, similar to squash, so does that count?

When we first moved to New Mexico we frequently found calabacitas on the menu, especially in New Mexican dishes. Since we didn’t want to look like a couple of Midwestern gringos, we didn’t ask. Well, it only took once to discover that we don’t like calabacitas – zucchini, squash and often corn together and frequently used as a filling for burritos or as a side dish. We just don’t care for the summer squashes. But we are beginning to enjoy winter squashes and luckily we have a few butternut growing in the garden this year. So, now that we have the issue of squash out of the way…

This week will be a short one for us as we are heading out of town to visit friends. So I did not go to the farmer’s market this weekend. Boo. And I am also trying to use up what is in the frig and not make too much so there aren’t too many leftovers. But if we get really desperate, there are more than 4 dozen tamales in the freezer for us (but I think we may be tamale’d out for a couple of weeks).

Spicy Tofu with Vegetables and Rice from The Complete Book of Thai Cooking by Linda Stephens – it’s becoming an old standby.

Spicy Cucumber Noodle Salad with Edamame – a new-to-us recipe that I had bookmarked a while back . I will use gf spaghetti instead of soba noodles as I have yet to find 100% buckwheat noodles. Most are made from a mixture of buckwheat and wheat. (BTW: Buckwheat is naturally gluten free, and is not wheat at all, unless it’s mixed with wheat of course.)

Veggie Burgers and Cucumber Salad with Spicy Thai Lime Vinaigrette – we had this salad a couple of weeks ago and it was fabulous!! A few minor changes for us, we omitted the carrots and instead of fish sauce I used GF soy sauce. Delish!

And if we need it – Red Beans and Rice with some added leftover vegetarian chorizo.

Well, that’s it for us this week! I hope to have some fun pictures and gluten free info from our travels this coming week. Over and out!

This meal plan is linked to OrgJunkie and the Gluten Free Menu Swap. Check out both for a ton of meal planning ideas!