Tofu "fish" tacos

A lot of inspiration for this blog comes from a blog James sent me: www.veganlunchbox.blogspot.com. It's a vegan mother who packs interesting vegan lunches for her little schmoo. She shared a recipe for tofu fish sticks with her readers and at first I was skeptical. But all the readers that tried it raved and raved about how good they were, so I figured it was worth the risk to try it.

James and I are also huge fans of a taco dinner. It's easy, fast and filling, but I've needed to make some changes to the way it's been done in the past. First off, we can no longer use taco seasoning packs, they all contain tomato. So I started mixing my own seasoning from garlic powder, cumin, coriander and chili powder, but as James progresses in his chemo, he's getting sores in his mouth that make anything spicy quite painful to eat. I decided to try the tofu fish sticks to see how they'd work in a taco, sort of an imatation of our favorite fish tacos at Agua Verde.

The verdict: Awesome! I didn't even make the tofu fish sticks entirely according to the recipe (I didn't have all the almonds I needed so I added sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds as well) and they still came out great. They taste just like the horribly bad-for-you, made from who-knows-what kind of fish fishstick from the box, but these are better. They're vegan and they've got far more protein than a regular fish stick. Putting it all together in a taco worked wonders too. Other ingredients included red cabbage, purple onion, cilantro and mine (pictured above) also had tomatoes and tartar sauce. James skipped the tomatoes and used a vegan sour-cream to add a bit of moisture.

These are definitely worth trying again and again. I urge anyone with little kids to give this recipe a shot, too since it's such an easy recipe (except for finding the kelp powder, I suppose). They are so tasty I ate three of the pan before they even made it into a taco! Mmm, fish sticks...