Image ID: a picture of a pan of yellow sauce mixed with spinach and tofu, on top of a stove. The edges of the pan are brown where the sauce cooked.
Really excited for this for my lunches these next few days. I found a recipe on YT (Creamy Garlic Tofu) and I'm happy to say my cooking intuition has gotten to where I can actually make improvements to recipes I see and not fuck them up. This sauce fucks severely, recipe under readmore
Ingredients:
- 1 block tofu (I think mine was 15.5oz packed)
- 2 cups leafy green like spinach or kale. I used baby spinach
- 4 cloves garlic
- salt and pepper by eye for the tofu
- 1/2 tsp msp (estimate) for the tofu
- soy milk (1 cup)
- vegetable broth (1 cup)
- 3 tbsp nutritional yeast.
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1 tsp white pepper (or 1/2 tsp) or something else hot
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 2 tbsp cornstarch
- 1/2 tbsp of tofutti or sour cream
Take your tofu and drain it, then tear it into pieces. Season it liberally with salt and pepper by eye (probably a tsp) and add 1/2 tsp of msg (no idea if this helped or not but I like msg).
Prepare the sauce in a pourable cup. Combine 1 cup of soy milk with 1 cup of vegetable broth, then add nutritional yeast, garlic powder, onion powder, and white pepper or your heat of choice (could also work with cayenne but you'd likely need to change the quantity). In another cup, combine soy sauce with cornstarch and mix it into a thick slurry. Once it's mixed, add that to your sauce. Whisk or stir to combine.
Heat up a pan with oil and pan fry the tofu until it's browned, then add your garlic on top and cook that until it's fragrant (super brief). Add your spinach on top and mix it in until it wilts, releases it's water, and then the pan starts to dry.
Remix and add your sauce and let that boil, then set the pan aside. Once it's cooled a bit add 1/2 tbsp of tofutti or sour cream and mix it in.
I put this over rice that I cooked separately. I think I added too much white pepper but my spice tolerance is just above mild, so I couldn't really tell you. The original recipe added all the sauce ingredients at once without making a slurry, so you could probably use less cornstarch if you wanted. I added the white pepper and tofutti
This is really thick don't use this much cornstarch if you're putting it over rice. I fucked up. The slurry technique worked to well it's like a cheese sauce
Image ID: a picture of a pan of yellow sauce mixed with spinach and tofu, on top of a stove. The edges of the pan are brown where the sauce cooked.
Really excited for this for my lunches these next few days. I found a recipe on YT (Creamy Garlic Tofu) and I'm happy to say my cooking intuition has gotten to where I can actually make improvements to recipes I see and not fuck them up. This sauce fucks severely, recipe under readmore
Ingredients:
- 1 block tofu (I think mine was 15.5oz packed)
- 2 cups leafy green like spinach or kale. I used baby spinach
- 4 cloves garlic
- salt and pepper by eye for the tofu
- 1/2 tsp msp (estimate) for the tofu
- soy milk (1 cup)
- vegetable broth (1 cup)
- 3 tbsp nutritional yeast.
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1 tsp white pepper (or 1/2 tsp) or something else hot
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 2 tbsp cornstarch
- 1/2 tbsp of tofutti or sour cream
Take your tofu and drain it, then tear it into pieces. Season it liberally with salt and pepper by eye (probably a tsp) and add 1/2 tsp of msg (no idea if this helped or not but I like msg).
Prepare the sauce in a pourable cup. Combine 1 cup of soy milk with 1 cup of vegetable broth, then add nutritional yeast, garlic powder, onion powder, and white pepper or your heat of choice (could also work with cayenne but you'd likely need to change the quantity). In another cup, combine soy sauce with cornstarch and mix it into a thick slurry. Once it's mixed, add that to your sauce. Whisk or stir to combine.
Heat up a pan with oil and pan fry the tofu until it's browned, then add your garlic on top and cook that until it's fragrant (super brief). Add your spinach on top and mix it in until it wilts, releases it's water, and then the pan starts to dry.
Remix and add your sauce and let that boil, then set the pan aside. Once it's cooled a bit add 1/2 tbsp of tofutti or sour cream and mix it in.
I put this over rice that I cooked separately. I think I added too much white pepper but my spice tolerance is just above mild, so I couldn't really tell you. The original recipe added all the sauce ingredients at once without making a slurry, so you could probably use less cornstarch if you wanted. I added the white pepper and tofutti
I haven't sewn or done anything fiber crafty in a while because I need to download some YouTube videos (and back other things up), which I couldn't fully figure out (needed to download something to download something with), and I couldn't focus on that until I figured out my FMLA, but bright side I figured out the latter and now I can work on the former and THEN I can sew (one more pair of scrub pants, then sweats, plus fixing a pair of scrubs, then other stuff). Downside is that I really need a project to do while recovering and I've no idea what.
Nearly finished my purple scrubs in one day and then my sewing machine got out of alignment, and by that I mean I almost finished it over a week ago and now I'm (HOPEFULLY) finishing it before work. All I had left was hemming and the waistband.... Bright side it fits great!! I'm going to remake my blue scrubs in this pattern and probably modify my red pants and then I'll be DONE for work pants. I'll probably only need one or two more biking pants too. Super stoked
In other news, it's gardening season again! Discovered my balcony doesn't get wet on one side when it rains...? Weird. Would explain why my potatoes died last year - still going to try again. Hoping my blackberry bush comes back and we can buy a strawberry plant this year :-)
Realized I haven't updated my scrubs adventure - made the scrubs out of the "real" fabric. Many many mistakes (forgot to remove the FBA when I stopped having the rise be above my belly button so it's too wide, made the rise too long, sewed pocket openings too short, sewed hem from the wrong side) but it's still my most comfortable pair of work pants by far. I am very happy with the color and have prepped the fabric for my next set (purple!!). I'm stealing the elastic from my first "wearable mock-up" pair - the waistband is too short to let the elastic rest without twisting up, so it needs to go. Might make a new pair in that same color or similar though.
Wearable scrubs mockup isn't half bad but not my favorite either. I should have just made the front of it straight up and down instead of keeping the curve in the FBA adjustment - now it curves weird instead of just being a fold like most scrubs. Drawstring twists as they all seem to. Crotch is slightly too high (no drag lines but not long enough for me) and hem is too high also.
Going to fix with a crotch gusset and redoing the hem and go from there. Hoping I can find a way for the waist placement to work - I just want pants that fit! Feel like this is very hard for some reason. Like if I was knitting this, it'd be easier to wrap my head around it.
Second day of wearing it. The waistband likes to fall down slightly but it's not terribly uncomfortable either, but I managed to tear the buttonhole so elastic waistband it is. Hoping I can find a waistband placement that requires no elastic for me to use in that spot - half the point of my sewing is to avoid plastic!
Wearable scrubs mockup isn't half bad but not my favorite either. I should have just made the front of it straight up and down instead of keeping the curve in the FBA adjustment - now it curves weird instead of just being a fold like most scrubs. Drawstring twists as they all seem to. Crotch is slightly too high (no drag lines but not long enough for me) and hem is too high also.
Going to fix with a crotch gusset and redoing the hem and go from there. Hoping I can find a way for the waist placement to work - I just want pants that fit! Feel like this is very hard for some reason. Like if I was knitting this, it'd be easier to wrap my head around it.
Figuring out the order of operations for sewing my wearable mockup and then final scrub pants with flat fell seams instead of overlocking everything. I can figure out the side seams but the pocket to pants seams are throwing me for a GD loop.
Figured out I can just make my trousers block into shorts so I can focus on the important parts without using 7 million yards of fabric per mockup. Feel like I cracked the code.
No pics bc I'm shy but I'm considering my First Real Trousers Mockup (I am not counting the zero waste scrubs mockup(s) from hell here) a tentative success. Needs far less adjustment than I thought it would, although one of the issues is confusing me.
The issues are a too high crotch, a too small waist/stomach area, and a too short leg. The leg is no issue at all and the crotch adjustment seems straightforward if tricky to get right. The waist issue is the one that bugs me.
When I'm standing up everything makes sense. There's a gap at the top where my full belly adjustment didn't go far enough, because I put some of the width into a wider dart, which is creating too much shape. Now I can just narrow the darts and create more width.
When I sit down, the gap gets wider, and there's also too much fabric vertically at certain points? But I can't tell if this is because it doesn't fit vertically or not!
I'm going to adjust the waist, draw a new waistband (this one was somehow 20% too long. I don't know), adjust the crotch, and the length and go from there. I'll figure out the waist more when I can actually pin it close. On that note, while I'll be fixing the length on the block, I won't be doing it in the new mockup as my next one will likely be shorts just to decrease mockup time.
I'm confident I can do this, although I wish I had help IRL. The sewing itself is easy (except for the waistband. Because I did it wrong) and quick compared to the draft.
Wishing myself luck and putting a tentative deadline of new years day for actually completed scrub pants.
Trousers block fits over my stomach as of right now! This is much more pleasant than my first attempt at a scrub mockup. This route is slightly more indirect (fitting the basic block before the scrub block) but I think much more efficient in the long run (I want jeans). Need to put the waistband on before I can call it "good" - as it is it can't reach my waist until it hits my crotch which is... Unfortunate. Also, I look like Steve Urkel.
Learning a couple things drafting a trousers block and sewing it on the machine
- I made these too short. Idk how I did that.
- I underestimated how complicated trousers actually are to sew, which is fine, but I see why these intimidate people.
- drafting the block took much longer than any cutting, sewing, or ironing done so far. I don't have all the elements since it's a mockup, but still.
- on that note, I am also way faster with the machine than I expected to be. This really does multiply your sewing output tenfold.
- I've no fucking idea how to transfer darts on both sides BUT I'm 90% sure I did it okay enough. It's my first mockup it's fine it's fine
- darts are fun to look at when they're done and bend the fabric but hard to iron without a pillow
- speaking of idk how the fuck people sew with polyester. The chalk lines rub off in 20 milliseconds and it will NOT hold a press wtf. Am I meant to melt this shit into place???
- I need less pins with this than hand sewing? Weird.
- getting an okayish seam allowance all the way around isn't too hard if I don't tug on it thanks to the markings on the throat plate so that's cool
- I should not sew the front pieces to themselves at the in/outseams.
- Although I did fuck up much faster than I could with my hands.
