Pad Thai with Tofu

Pad Thai.  What can I say about this dish?  It is simple and has a lot of flavor.  And it's flexible.  This recipe uses tofu, but you could leave the tofu out altogether if you want (though I don't recommend that) or substitute chicken, or maybe even beef.  I'm not so positive that beef would work well - years of being vegetarian has affected my ability to imagine if that would taste right, just a little bit.
You can also make this dish as spicy or as bland as you want, though to be fair, even if you leave out all the spice the dish still has plenty of flavor.  The most recent time I made this, I made a poor judgement call with the hot sauce I used (red Tobasco as opposed to the Frank's hot sauce I usually use) and the Pad Thai came out to be "five alarm Pad Thai" instead of "Pad Thai with a kick".  It was still good, but I couldn't eat as much as I normally would have - probably a good thing for my waist line anyway. :-p

Surprisingly, my 18 month old daughter has been the biggest fan of the five alarm style.  I was eating some for lunch while she was eating something that I felt would be much safer for her little taste buds and she reached out for some of my pad thai.  I warned her that it was really spicy, gave her one noodle, made sure her milk was within reach and fully expected her to spit that noodle right back out.  She picked up the noodle and inhaled it.  I gave her a few more bites and she inhaled those too.  She ended up eating about half of my plate of noodles!  Yup, my daughter is no spice wimp, that's for sure!

The original recipe can be found here.   I have made some adjustments and additions to the original recipe.  The way I make it is below:

-1 pkg rice noodles (if you are buying the Israeli rice noodles "maklonei orez", 1/2 a package will go a long way!)
-6 Tbsp soy sauce
-6 Tbsp lime juice
-3 Tbsp peanut butter*
-Hot sauce to taste
-6 Tbsp sugar
-1 block extra firm tofu, diced
-2 carrots, shredded
-4 eggs, scrambled
-4-6 cloves of garlic
-2 Tbsp sesame oil
-1/2 C bean sprouts
-1/4 C peanuts*
-4 green onions

Cook the rice noodles and set aside.

Mix together the soy sauce, lime juice, peanut butter, sugar, and hot sauce.

Heat the sesame oil in a wok or a large skillet.  Saute the tofu, onions, and garlic until the tofu browns a bit.  Add in the carrot and scrambled egg.  mix briefly and then mix in the rice noodles.  Pour the soy sauce mixture over the noodles and mix until the sauce has coated and been absorbed by the noodles.
Garnish with bean sprouts, green onion, and peanuts before serving.

*I know this is a crazy idea, but if you have a peanut allergy, you could try substituting Sunbutter for the peanut butter and either leaving out the peanuts altogether or sprinkling some sunflower seeds for the added crunch if you want.  If anyone tries this, please let me know how it turns out.  I remember Sunbutter tasting even better than peanut butter and I feel like it just might work!