Roasted Tofu with Garlic scapes, (summer rears it's head in the middle of winter)

I was digging through my freezer and happened upon a little bag of green stuff. When I saw the word "scapes" on it in fading sharpie ink, my heart jumped and I was instantly transported to summer and the huge bag of garlic scapes my friend melissa brought me from her friend's garlic farm. I had thoughtfully ground them up with a little salt and oil and frozen them, and then forgotten about them. What a nice gift in the middle of winter!

Garlic scapes are the tops of garlic plants that shoot up form the earth, which are then cut off so that the garlic will put it's energy into fortifying the bulb beneath the ground, not growing a garlic plant above. Later the bulbs are harvested and then dried. Scapes are usually available for about a two week period of time, I think in late June, but my winter brain can't quite imagine the details of the growing season at the moment.

Garlic scapes make a great pesto, or just a garlic flavored mash that you can add to anything. Here I just tossed it on some tofu, with some olive oil salt and pepper and roasted it in the oven at 400 degrees until it was nicely browned on the bottom, about 20 minutes.


A squeeze of lemon over it when it comes out of the oven is a nice addition too.
The bottoms got brown and crispy
I sliced up the tofu and tossed it with some roasted sweet potatoes I cooked on Sunday afternoon so that I'd have some "food for the week", a bunch of lettuce (that was washed on Sunday as well so it was no effort to throw it into a bowl), a squeeze of lemon, and we were good to go. The kids ate the tofu with rice and vegetables, for a warmer, more "kid friendly meal"
(sorry for some of the yellow photos like this one. I take many of my pictures at night when I'm cooking dinner, and the light is not great. I'm working on a solution, but it will be a while, so bear with me!)

NOTE: if you don't have garlic scapes, you can finely chop some garlic together with salt so that it macerates. Mix the garlic with a little oil and rub that on the tofu. season with salt and pepper and roast as instructed above.