I failed.

Looks awesome, right? It wasn’t.

Sometimes meals just suck.  I can’t remember ever making an inedible meal before.  Maybe this dinner was never meant to be – after all, for two days in a row I forgot to prep the tofu the night before, like I intended.  I was determined to eat this though, because I had a recipe for Crispy Ginger Garlic Tofu that looked so good.  I’m not even going to give you the recipe, because while it is probably fine, I can’t figure out where all of the problems occured.

I had all of the ingredients, lots of fresh veggies to serve with it, and nothing else we could have really even had for dinner if we wanted.  So…I told Lo how to prep the tofu and marinate it when he got home for work before he came to meet me for yoga.  It was a perfect plan.  We got home and I got right to work by chopping the vegetables and starting the mushrooms (they actually turned out well). 

Marinating tofu

I started the cooking the marinated tofu in a hot skillet (which was pretty tasty when I tried a piece of it raw).  While the veggies were sauteing in another skillet, I mixed up a quick sauce to add to the sauteed veggies – it was just off the top of my head and I think it had soy sauce, braggs amino acid, sesame oil, chili garlic sauce, ginger, garlic, and red pepper flakes.  Great right?  No – all stirfry sauces have some form of sweetener, which I failed to include – and also failed to taste. 

Once the veggies were almost finished, I poured the “sauce” on them so they could absorb some of the “flavor” and the “sauce” could thicken.  When the tofu was crispy on both sides, I removed it and cooked down the leftover marinade before pouring it over the tofu. 

steamy stir-fried veggies

We just piled the components of the meal onto our plates and sat down to eat.  After a bite, I said – it’s going to be a little salty because of the soy sauce.  After a second bite, I got up and got Lo some Orange Ginger Sauce that we had in the fridge (I couldn’t have it b/c of gluten) because I thought he would want to add some to cover the salty-ness.  After four bites, I recognized HOW salty it was and said that I don’t think I’ve ever made such a bad dish.  Lo said he doesn’t ever remember me making a dish that wasn’t at least okay.  For some reason, we just kept eating it, and kept remarking on how salty it was.  When I got to about 3 bites left, I was really struggling to eat it.  He finished his only because he was starving.  I thought it was the veggies that were so salty, whereas he thought the tofu was the worst part.  We had some leftovers, so I rinsed the vegetables of all sauce in hopes that it would make it more edible. 

crispy ginger tofu with pan sauce

Within 40 minutes, my digestive system was feeling funny and I couldn’t get enough water.  Things went horribly wrong digestively, but it was weird because my stomach never bothered me whatsoever (like it would have if I would have had gluten).  Within about 1.5 hours, I drank around 60 oz. of water and 2 small glasses of OJ, and I could not quench my thirst!  So I don’t really know what happened – I can’t imagine that sodium could have caused my issues, and within an hour of eating!  I wanted to post the pictures anyway, to show that sometimes the pretty meals are awful, and the ugly meals are awesome.