Hobo stew, vaguely Mexican-style!

For reasons too mysterious and boring to explain, my boyfriend's car broke down this weekend, thus rendering us without an automotive vehicle. (Why don't you have a car, Rebecca, you ask? Because I'm a horrible driver.) For reasons still too boring to go into, we had no food in the house, save for some random staples. Given that Oakland was about 147 degrees Fahrenheit this past Saturday, the prospect of riding our bikes to Berkeley Bowl and/or Trader Joe's was too grissly to bear, relegating us to rely on our semi-crappy, very local grocery store.

Here's the story of how we made a frickin' delicious meal with limited transportation resources.

What we had:

• Frozen corn
• Canned black beans
• Half a leftover onion
• All the spices your little heart could ever want

What we bought:

• Wildwood firm tofu (the only brand carried by Piedmont Grocery)
• Roma tomato
• Small zucchini
• Red bell pepper
• Fresh cilantro
• Lime
• Avocado
• Corn tortillas

Though we bought a large variety of items, it represented a small, inexpensive, easily transportable volume of goods. Here's what I did with the ingredients:

• Chopped or diced each ingredient according to preference; the tofu is best in 0.25"-0.5" cubes
• Marinated the tofu in 3/4ths the juice of one lime with salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, red pepper flakes, cumin, and (for some reason) allspice to taste
• Carmelized the onions, then added the corn and tomato (with the squishy stuff removed), then the tofu, then the beans and bell pepper, and lastly the cilantro
• Cooked these long enough to brown the tofu and onions but not so long that the bell pepper turned orange and flaccid
• Meanwhile, I warmed each corn tortilla in an un-greased non-Teflon frying pan, just enough to blacken a few spots on each side
• Meanwhile number two, I mushed together the avocado with the rest of the lime juice and some salt and pepper to make a refreshing green topping
• Served this mixture up somewhat hapahazardly, but you might want to craft some cute lil' mini-burritos or something like that

Voila! A delicious, refreshing meal that went well with the hot weather outside and that didn't necessitate a car, lots of money, or very much time. I'm also happy to report that the mixture held up well overnight in the fridge. The tofu was especially durable; maybe grocery store tofu monopolies aren't such a bad thing after all.

Happy eating, and good luck beating the heat!