Vegetarian Junk Food

Being that pizza and ice cream are vegetarian I think it's pretty obvious that not everything that qualifies as meatless is necessarily going to get your cardiologist's seal of approval. However in this particular case I think Anna did a nice job of putting out some fun "junk food" that at least isn't horrible for you. She made this meal in its entirety with no aid from me. Said meal consisted of some salt and vinegar oven baked potato chips and tofu buffalo "wings"... and then some green beans to make us feel better about ourselves. The recipe for the chips can be found here... they were really good, but the vinegar flavor (even after 5 minutes simmering) wasn't as strong as I prefer, and I suspect that doing a real deep fry would have been best flavor/texture wise.... but presumably the oven thing saves us some calories and there is no reason to complain about that. A good use for a mandoline/v-slicer if you've got one.



The buffalo tofu was really, really good stuff. Recipe here. Nice spice and a good crust... loved it, and definitely recommend it. Anna used butter, but you could obviously sub in margarine to veganize it (indeed, the recipe calls for vegan "butter"). There was no special treatment of the tofu beyond draining in a colander, which makes me wonder whether it would be improved by freezing or pressing. If you pressed the tofu you'd probably want to go a different direction and marinade it, but freezing will give you a chewier texture... which might be nice. However it really was great as it is, so there is no serious need to make any changes.



As far as "junk food" goes, obviously you can go a lot worse than the vegetarian fare pictured here... but I think you want to throw something green on there just so you can point out that there is a vegetable involved if questioned. Otherwise the chips and tofu are a great option for a vegetarian tailgate (yes, there are vegetarians who like sports).