Vegan Tofu Patties

I've been away camping with my boyfriend and friends at Cultas Lake. I knew this was going to be an interesting weekend, being my first trip since the change, and tried to be as food/alcohol conscious as possible.
Unfortunately on the first night there was a big batch of pasta made with ground beef in the sauce, the second night was salmon and there was copious amounts of booze consumed, all in all a successful camping trip!

 For Lunch's I did get in my Veggie Dogs and Veggie Burgers

This was a vodka watermelon to be apart of a watermelon eating contest, so every one's hangover came with a full serving of fruit! BONUS!

Here everyone got a lesson on Yves Veggie Burgers! I was very confused when I first bought the burgers as to why it said 8 per package when there were only 4 individual vacuum sealed patties. Only after my burger caught on fire did we realize there was a piece of paper separating the two patties that we failed to notice! Live and learn :)

Once back I realized I had some tofu in the fridge and had no idea what to do with it. So I went online and found a site called the Savvy Vegetarian. They had a recipe for "Delicious gourmet baked tofu patties" that I loosely followed with what I had available in my kitchen. The following is the recipe I ended up baking with.

Vegan Tofu Patties

Ingredients:

1 package (350g) Extra Firm Tofu

1 Cup of corn

1/2 Cup celery, diced

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 Cup cooked brown rice

1/3 Cup flour

2 tsp Masala spice mix

1 small yellow onion, diced

olive oil, to saute

salt & pepper, to taste

bread crumbs, to coat

Directions:

Allow oven to preheat to 350 and cook rice. 

Cube tofu and mash with potato masher.[I need a food processor so if you have it, use it!]

In a small pan add onions and olive oil to coat and allow to turn brown and soft, stir to prevent burning.

In a larger pan add oil to saute garlic, then add celery, corn, and masala spices, again stir to prevent burning.

Add all veggies to mashed tofu, mix in rice and flour.

At this point I used my hands to mix everything[ needs food processor!].

Form fist sized balls and flatten to patty formation

Coat in bread crumbs and arrange on tinfoil lined cookie sheet.

Bake for about 25 minutes until the outside is firm and golden crispy!

**NOTES** these quantities yielded 10 patties. I found them to be a little bland and dry but my little cousins loved them! Granted, one of them slathered them in ketchup and they other, vanilla icing.... but they came back for seconds! Next time I'll try adding some tomatoes for flavour and moisture.

Once refrigerated they loose some crunchiness so I fried them up with a little oil. The original recipe calls for a mixture of different spices that are generally used in Indian Curry. The Masala mix was a perfect premixed substitute.

I'm giving this recipe a 5/10 for healthy tofu punch! The boyfriend(who needs a name...hmmm) said it resembled crab cakes without the taste of crab "and I like crab cakes, so not bad!" and crazy cousins came back for seconds!

Enjoy!

Now, what to do with my soft tofu?!

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"The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or woman created for men."

                                                                                     -Alice Walker