Vegan Cooking in Colorado: My first tofu scramble

I've been wanting to make a tofu scramble for a long time and tonight was finally my night! It came up on our menu because we're going to Moab with some friends soon and are planning on making tofu scrambles for breakfast and I wanted to do some test runs before bringing the recipe there. This one is definitely a keeper. I've been to some breakfast places and ordered tofu scrambles before and all they do is crumble tofu (unseasoned) into a scramble of veggies. Not too exciting. I like this recipe because it has a lot of spices for flavor and nutritional yeast to give it a more eggy/cheesy texture and taste. For those of you who love scrambled eggs and are leery about tofu- still give this a try but it might not do it for you, unless you're trying to cut out eggs from your diet. If you're like me and never loved scrambled eggs but liked them then you might love this recipe. OK so anyways, this comes from the Post Punk Kitchen blog site. It's a great base for whatever add-ins you'd like to use. I added onions, red pepper, spinach and some fake bacon bits.

Ingredients:

Spice blend:
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried thyme, crushed with your fingers
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp salt
3 Tbs water

2 Tbs olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced (I used 5)
1 lb extra-firm tofu, drained
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
fresh black pepper to taste
(+any other add-ons)

1. Stir the spice blend together in a small cup. Add water and mix then set aside.

2. Preheat a large, heavy bottomed pan over medium high heat. Sauté the garlic (and onion if using) in olive oil for about 4 minutes. Here is when I sautéed the chopped red pepper, followed by the spinach.

Here's what little Estes was doing while I was cooking:)

3. Break the tofu apart into bite sized pieces and sauté for about 10 minutes, using a spatula to stir often. Get under the tofu when you are stirring, scrape the bottom and don't let it stick to the pan, that is where the good, crispy stuff is. The tofu should get browned on at least one side, but you don't need to be too precise about it. The water should cook out of it and not collect too much at the bottom of the ban. If that is happening, turn the heat up and let the water evaporate.