Vegan Family Dinners: Noodle Stirfry with Tofu, Broccoli & Carrots

Noodle Stirfry with Tofu, Broccoli & Carrots

Recently a friend asked me to clarify my position on vegan eating, and she was particularly curious if I was raising my 2 year old son as vegan.  The short answer to the first question is: I am not vegan in the strict sense.  Do I try to make the majority of my meals plant-based and meat and dairy free? Yes.  But do I occasionally eat dairy, eggs and meat? Yes.  I like to use the workweek model as a guide to keep the majority of my meals plant-based, which really helps limit meat and dairy in a normal week of at-home cooking.  But will I eat meat on a Tuesday if, say, I'm invited to a dinner party and the host has prepared meat? Yes.  So I may be best defined as an omnivore who strives to eat most of my meals in a way that is friendly to my personal health as well as the sustainability of the environment (Huffington Post's recent and somewhat devastating article on the beef industry and its environmental impact, provides the most recent example of what I mean by this).

As for my 2 year-old son, he is also an omnivore who more regularly eats meat and dairy than my husband and I do.  Now that he is getting older, we are trying to do more family meals together, so when our son eats with us on a weeknight (sometimes if my husband is busy, we eat after our son does), he will eat a vegan dinner.  I was happy to discover a great blog called Veggie Kids, where a mom catalogs her attempts at family meals with a vegan family and an omnivore husband.  This blog has a lot of great examples of kid-friendly vegan meals that I am starting to look to for inspiration.  Some parents fear a vegan diet for their kids because of the potentially large amount of soy they might eat, which has been shown to interfere with hormonal balance in children.  However, as most practicing vegans would tell you, not every meal need or must involve soy--there are meat substitutes derived from vital wheat gluten and dairy substitutes that are nut and rice based.  And recently, my pediatrician reassured me that a child would have to be consuming excessive quantities of soy for there to be any concern of a hormonal interaction.  When your kid is an omnivore who, say, regularly drinks cows milk but sometimes eats plant-based meals with his parents, there is no risk of this.

So what type of meals are both plant-based and something that a 2 year-old might eat?  Last week, we had whole-wheat fettuccine in a stir-fry with tofu, broccoli and carrot sticks--both vegetables my son is already fond of and used to regularly consuming, so I figured they would be a good place to start (I also included a small amount of fresh spinach, but this cooks down and virtually disappears in the stir-fry so he wasn't even aware of it).

Kid-friendly Stirfry Components-choose veggies they like

I cooked the stir-fry as I normally would, including sliced onions and chopped garlic cloves.  However, when it came to preparing the sauce for the stir-fry, I still used two tablespoons of tomato paste and 1 tablespoon of rice vinegar, but I cut down the amount of soy sauce and eliminated the hot chili sauce that I normally would have added to a stir-fry just my husband and I were eating. These would be on the table for us to add to the dish once Declan had been served.  I also used three tablespoons of maple syrup to the dish instead of two to increase the sweetness.  And for the plating: you can't serve a two-year old a big pile of noodle stir-fry, so when serving Declan, I separated his serving out into its individual components once they had already been cooked together in the wok and included fruit and nuts as additional sides to round out his meal.

Declan's Stirfry

The Grown-Up Stirfry cooked in the same wok at the same time

So you see, all palates and expectations for a weeknight dinner can be satisfied at the same time by the same single wok. 

Noodle Stirfry with Tofu, Broccoli & Carrots
Serves 4


Ingredients:
1 block extra-firm tofu, drained and cubed
2 cups broccoli florets
1 cup thinly sliced carrot sticks
2 cups fresh spinach
1 yellow onion, sliced
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 cup vegetable broth
2 tbsp olive or canola oil
1/2 package whole-wheat linguini

For the sauce:
3 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp rice vinegar
2 tbsp tomato paste
3 tbsp maple syrup

Directions: Boil a large pot of water for the linguini.  Meanwhile, wash and chop your vegetables and preheat your wok over medium high heat.  Add the oil to the pan and when it begins to shimmer, add your hardy vegetables and tofu. I usually add the tofu, onions and garlic in a batch and give them a couple of good stirs over the heat before adding the broccoli and carrots.  Let the vegetables sear and brown in the oil a bit before adding a 1/4 cup of vegetable broth.  Keep adding a 1/4 cup of vegetable broth as need to the pan to somewhat steam the vegetables and tofu while also stir-frying them.  Once your water has come to a boil, add the linguini and boil 9 minutes or so until al dente before draining in a colander.  Set aside until you are ready to add the noodles to the stir-fry.  Once the vegetables are beginning to give, especially the hardier broccoli and carrots, begin adding the components of your sauce to the wok: soy sauce, rice vinegar, tomato paste, and maple syrup.  Stir to coat the vegetables, then add the noodles, turn the heat off, add the fresh spinach and continue to stir to incorporate.  Before serving the adult or older children portions, remove enough stir fry for the little children in your life, making sure that you have some of each major component: broccoli, tofu, carrots and noodles.  Cut the noodles into thirds before serving to little ones.