A Quick But Satisfying Dinner

Tonight was supposed to be falafel night, but Costco didn't have any pita. I tried to pick up pita yesterday at Fred Meyer, but Keziah decided she wanted to scream the whole time, so I wound up having to hurry up and get out of the store. So, instead, we decided to give this tikka masala sauce from Costco a try. I got some pre-fried tofu (for the extremely lazy) at the Asian grocery yesterday, and decided to use that. First step, start some brown rice.
Next, bust open a Fresh Express Asian Supreme salad. These things are super handy when you are as lazy as I am. Pop 'em open, toss in a bowl, ready to eat. I haven't really tried any of the other varieties, because this one is clearly the best. Mmm, orange sesame dressing.
Grabbed some veggies from the fridge: 1 yellow bell pepper, a large onion, and half a tomato I had lying around. I only used about half the onion, though.
Have to say I was skeptical about the sauce - I've been burned by Indian-food-in-a-bottle before, especially the Patak's tikka masala sauce. It smells great, but when you go to eat it, there's just something missing. I sauteed the onion in a tablespoon of canola oil, followed shortly by the pepper, then threw in the tomato. After another minute or two, I added the tofu and about 3 cups of the sauce (3/4 of the container). Let it simmer for 15 minutes and voila!

The sauce came out tasting great, and the tofu really absorbed the flavors of the sauce and the veggies!

Now for the damage:

• Bag of salad with dressing: 360 calories
• Fried tofu: 1000 calories
• 1.75 cups (before preparation) of short-grain brown rice: 1260 calories
• 3 cups of tikka masala sauce: 840 calories
• 1 tbsp of canola oil: 116 calories
• 1 yellow bell pepper: 33 calories
• 1/2 large onion: 30 calories
• 1/2 tomato: 11 calories

Grand total: 3650 calories! Jeebus!

Oh wait, I didn't eat it all by myself. Let's see, I had half of the salad, so that's 180 calories. Then, a high-ball-park estimate is that I had 1/4 of the rest of the food (although probably not that much of the rice). So that's 822 calories. A total of about 1000 calories. Huh. I guess I'm going to have to work hard at not going back for seconds.