Okara!

I have been attempting to make homemade tofu lately, with local organic Iowa soybeans. The first try was pretty successful, despite the amount of time it took and the difficulty of the clean-up afterward. The second time, I tried to triple the batch and I wasn't as successful. I didn't have proper equipment for that quantity and in the end, it didn't turn out as firm as I would have liked. But when you make homemade tofu or soy milk, you get a lot of okara, which is the by-product of making tofu/soy milk. Literally, in Japanese, it translates to "honorable shell". It is high in fiber, protein and nutrients. Some Japanese farmers use it for livestock feed, it also can be an ingredient in high-protein cat and dog food, and it can be good for us humans to eat too!
First, I'll give you a rough outline of how tofu is made. You mix soybeans and water, blend it into a milky substance, and bring it to a boil. Then you pour that into a multiple-folded cheesecloth or a fine-woven towel in a strainer, and the part that strains out is the soy milk. After squeezing as much milk out as possible, you have dried-out pulpy stuff left, which is the okara. (You can then go on to heat up the soy milk and add nigari salt, which coagulates it, and pour it back into the cheesecloth- "tofu stock" will strain out and what's left in the cheesecloth is the curdled soy milk, or tofu).
In my experience of making tofu twice, I ended up with more okara than tofu. It can be composted, or frozen for future use, but I'm the adventurous type, so I did some research and found this blog- all about okara! I also got some ideas from The Book of Tofu and I have made chicken-less (or un-chicken) nuggets, okara muffins, okara cookies, okara granola, and okara english muffin bread. The baked goods don't necessarily taste much different, but they are much more filling, and good for you!
On the off-chance that someone out there on the world wide web is looking for something to do with their okara, I will be posting some of these recipes for you soon.
Above: less then half of the okara from 3 lbs. of soybeans used in chocolate-banana muffins, carrot-almond muffins, chocolate chip cookies, english muffin bread and granola!