Tofu and Dumplings

I was flipping through Canadian Living magazine (yes, I am a middle-aged woman on the inside...) when I come across this Chicken and Dumplings recipe. I liked it for two reasons. 1) I had been eating a lot of Asian-flavoured things, Thai, Indian, etc and I liked the idea of something very homey, like Thanksgiving dinner and 2) it involved minimum work because the 'dumplings' were actually just gnocchi. Amazing.

Well, first things first, I skipped the chicken and made tofu instead. It's all bland protein anyway! So I fried up one package and set it aside. Then I put some butter in the pan and added the veggies in: 3 small carrots, 1 small onion, and 1 large parsnip. I skipped the celery but I'm sure it would be tasty. Then I stirred in 2 garlic cloves, 2 Tbsp flour to thicken things up and 1/2 tsp dried thyme, which smelled amazing and so like Thanksgiving.

I added in 2 cups chicken stock and 1 cup of water, brought it to a boil, and cooked the veggies for about 10 minutes. Then the fun part, throwing in the tofu, a package of gnocchi and some peas. Good thing too, because without the carrots and peas it wouldn't have been very visually appealing - so many white foods! My only complaint was that it was a little bland, so salt was needed, and a little spice would have been nice, like paprika.

Of course this Sunday dinner-style meal is probably meant to be shared with friends and family - alas, I ate it all by myself on a night in. Maybe I shouldn't have - alone, I ate about three servings at once. It was that irresistible. It was like a chicken pot pie filling - pure comfort food. I will definitely make this again, multiple times. Super easy and delicious and if you ignore the large amount of carbohydrates, sorta healthy? Right?