101 Ways to Eat Tofu… January 29, 2008

 Okay, not quite 101 ways to eat tofu – but you can find some recipes below that will get you started. I feel that I need to champion that grossly misunderstood block of white, jiggly stuff that is also known as tofu. I looove tofu! In all it’s glorious forms (shaken, stirred, fried, steamed, baked, pureed). It is an amazing versatile addition to any kitchen and once people can get over their squeamishness they will be surprised at the possibilities.

I do not quite understand the hesitancy that arises when people wax poetic about how disgusting tofu is. My first response is that they have never had it cooked properly to have that many bad associations with it. My second response is that there are far more disgusting things that people put in their mouths and label haute cuisine – steak tartare, caviar, foie gras – are a few that come to mind. So, why does everyone pick on a humble little product made of coagulated soy milk?

Tofu on its own is completely tasteless. So, years ago when tofu was first introduced to the Western world you might have had an overenthusiastic health foodie serve you steamed tofu – with nothing else added – which is not the way it is meant to be tasted. The best thing about tofu is its sponge like properties. It soaks up absolutely any flavor that you put on it, or that you add it to. Try at least one of the following recipes on for size and see if it doesn’t change your mind about tofu, or introduce someone in your household or family to these recipes and see if their opinions change. Happy cooking!

Tofu Chimichangas (The Garden of Vegan – Tanya Barnard & Sarah Kramer)

1/4 cup Braggs

3 Tbsp Nutritional Yeast

1/2 tsp each onion and garlic powder

1 cup water

1 lb. firm tofu, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 small onion, chopped

1 Tbsp olive oil

1/4 tbsp. chili powder

1/2 tsp cumin

6 tortilla shells

2 cups vegan refried beans

1 cup soy cheese, grated

1/3 cup olives (optional)

In medium bowl stir together Braggs, nutritional yeast, onion powder, garlic powder, and water. Add tofu and let marinate for 1-2 hours or overnight in the refrigerator. Preheat oven to 350 F. Drain the marinated tofu and set aside. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, saute the garlic and onions in oil until onions are translucent. Add tofu, chili powder, and cumin. Stir together and cook for 8-10 minutes while mashing tofu with wooden spoon. Set aside. Place tortilla shells on a flat surface. In the middle of each shell evenly divide the tofu mixture, beans, soy cheese, and olive. Wrap up and place on baking sheet/dish. Bake for 10-15 minutes, or until tortillas are browned. Serve with guacamole and salsa.

BBQ Baked Tofu (Veganomicon – Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero)

1 jar of BBQ Sauce (the original recipe use a BBQ recipe in the book, but I usually just use a jarred sauce)

1 lb tofu, drained and pressed, cut width-wise into eighths

2 tbsps peanut oil

1 tbsp soy sauce

Preheat the oven to 350. In a 9×18 inch (preferably glass or ceramic) baking pan, dredge the tofu in the peanut oil and soy sauce to coat on both sides. Bake for 15 minutes, then flip the slices and bake for 15 minutes more. Meanwhile prepare whatever sauce you are using. When tofu is done baking, pour the BBQ sauce over it. Return to the oven and bake for 15 more minutes. Remove from the oven and serve.

Fried “Egg” Sandwich (The Garden of Vegan – Tanya Barnard & Sarah Kramer)

This is my all-time favorite breakfast sandwich! Delicious, nutritious, and easy to make!

1 tbsp nutritional yeast

1/8 tsp each pepper and salt

2 slices firm tofu (about the size of your bread)

1 tsp olive oil

Vegannaise

Sprouts/Lettuce/Tomato/Avocado – or anything else you might want to add.

On a small plate stir together the nutritional yeast, salt, and pepper. Dip both sides of the tofu into the mix to coat. In a large frying pan over medium-high heat, saute the tofu in oil until browned. Flip and cook other side. Assemble sandwich using toasted bread, mayo, tofu, and whatever vegetables you want. You can serve it either open-faced or sandwich style

Don’t Be Afraid of the Cold… January 22, 2008

I haven’t been running lately.  It all started just before Thanksgiving when I awoke with a sniffly nose and congestion in my chest.  My breathing was somewhat labored – enough to let me know that I shouldn’t go for a run that day.  So, took the week off – tried to move and walk as  much as I could – things stayed together, somewhat….

Headed into Thanksgiving – wham!  Hit by another sniffle, cold, annoying thing.  Not enough to be fully incapacitated – but enough to limit my activity.  Took another week off.  This time we were in the Adirondacks – not as much opportunity to move when you have two young children in tow.  They are too little to skate, or ski.  We walked a little bit, and played outside a little bit more.  Mostly we sat around and ate and drank (my husband and I drank, not the kids) - not the best fitness strategy, but hey I figured I would be back in business next week.  So, I took another week off from running.

And then December happened, and along came something very unusual.  In those two short weeks when I was down for the count with some silly sniffling thing – I forgot to make room for running in my life.  Sure, I was busy running around – sending out queries, baking cookies, buying presents, mailing cards – but somehow running simply dropped from my list of things “to do”.  Now, I have been running for 18 years – I have a long and convoluted love relationship with my running.  It is me.  It is what I love to do.  Running has always been there for me – carrying me through crazy times, happy times, sad times.  It is generally not something that I forget to do!  How on earth did I replace my deep and committed running relationship with the sordidness of holiday busyness!

It just happened.  It snuck up on me so slowly that it took me six weeks to even notice that running was missing.  For the past four years, since the birth of our first child, Saturday morning has become about me busily negotiating with my husband as to when, and for how long, I can fit a run in that will coincide with all of the weekend plans that we need to accomplish as a family.  Then suddenly one Saturday I awoke and realized that it had been an awfully long time since I had participated in the those negotiations.  A two week sniffle – had turned into a six week lapse. 

Then I read the article in the New York Times this past Friday –  ”Too Cold to Exercise?  Try Another Excuse”, written by Gina Kulata.  The title pretty much sums up the substance of the article.  In other words, it has to get pretty darn cold for you to use it as an excuse to exercise outside in the winter – no, your lungs will not freeze, and yes, you should always where a hat.   And then I realized that is exactly what I had been doing.  I was born and raised in the Canadian West and am no stranger to cold.  I used to play hockey outside with my brother until my toes and fingers were frozen and then only come inside for a quick hot chocolate and then head out again.  However, I had to admit that living in NYC these past few years had turned me into a softie.  I had missed the great outdoors.  That is where I love to run.  Treadmills are okay in a pinch, like maybe a torrential rain storm – but really my instinct has always to be outside – with the wind in my face, and the pavement pounding at my feet.

 So, I hit the great outdoors with a vengeance this past weekend!  Temperatures in the Adirondacks dipped to below zero (yes, that is below zero in Fahrenheit, not Celsius) – good old Canadain winter type temperatures!  And there I was.  Heading onto the road – bundled up somewhat – a little cold at first – but before I knew it I was running, and warming up, and giggling to myself, and reminding myself that this 38 year old body could definitely feel like a child again!

It feels good to be reunited with my running.  I am a better person when I run.  A better mother, a better wife, a better writer, a better daughter, a better sister.  It is as if running unites all the roles and responsibilities that make up my being and unites them into one.  I cannot explain it, but it sure feels good to have rediscovered it.  

Tonight’s the night… December 10, 2007

…for Tofurkey!  Yes, that is right.  I finally manged to get around to cooking the Tofurkey dinner that I have had in my refrigerator since Thanksgiving.  And guess what?  I should have left it in the refrigerator until next Thanksgiving.  Thank goodness the entire meal only cost me $14.99.  Also, thank goodness my husband wasn’t around to witness the debacle – though I might have to send my poor children to counseling to recover from the experience.  Yes, it was that bad…

I was disappointed.  I wanted Tofurkey to withstand all the jokes that are thrown its way.  Tofurkey has somehow become the one vegan/vegetarian product that everyone is familiar with.  It is the one item that my non-vegan friends taunt and tease me with – I guess in its own weird way Tofurkey is sort of like Spam – it doesn’t get a great deal of respect.  I know people that love Tofurkey – which was the reason I went with it.  I ordered it for Thanksgiving and then forgot to take it to the cabin.  It had since taken up residence in my refrigerator and I could finally stand it no longer, I was ready to take the plunge…

It tasted so artificial.  I guess that was my biggest disappointment.  I am not sure what I expected it to taste like – but with a list of ingredients an arm’s length long – it wasn’t surprising that it didn’t taste like any real food that I know.  It did bring back memories, buried long ago from my childhood, when my parents would go out for the evening and leave the sitter in charge of putting Swanson’s TV Dinners in the oven.  It had that same sort of fake, processed, mystery ingredient taste. 

The entire experience really just underscored my long held grudge against processed foods – especially organic and all natural “processed” foods – that they are still processed no matter what the quality of the ingredients are – and are therefore, expected to have a long life span – and in the end do you really want to put all those ingredients in your body – natural or not!  Plus, it was all just so weird – eating a product made of non-animal products that was designed to replace and to look like an animal product.  Does that make sense?  I think I will stick to my vegetables, and fruits, and grains, in combinations that leave them with a resemblence to what they might look like in nature.  May the Tofurkey rest in peace, at least in this household…

Parenting Woes – Juice vs. Water November 29, 2007

I am tired of the discussions that I constantly overhear during drop off at my daughter’s preschool.  For this express reason I have started arriving later and later.  Yesterday I breezed in precisely at 2:30 – just as the children were being let out, but still managed to somehow overhear the insanity!

I have no idea why people become so emotionally attached to what they perceive as being the correct way to parent.  Bizarre topics that have been covered so far – TV (and the moral superiority of those who either don’t have TVs or who don’t allow their children to watch TV – I will save this pet peeve for another post); McDonald’s (and what an evil empire it is); Ferberizing (yet another pet peeve); playdates (why young children need to have a constantly booked schedule is beyond me).  However, it is the inane topic that was under discussion that really drives me crazy – the whole juice-is-evil-and-must-be-kept-under-lock-and-key-never-to-emerge argument.  Which like many of the others listed above should just be put to rest.

One parent who’s children are new to the full day program have apparently been “hounding” their mother to put juice boxes in their lunch cases.  The claim behind this request is that “everyone else has a juice box”.  I sort of just shrug this comment off as my child is one of “those” who has a juice box in her lunch everyday.  One other smug parent has to make the statement that “this obviously cannot be true as her son has water everyday in his lunch”.  I don’t know why this statement bothered me, but it just did.  The implication behind it is that I obviously have no clue what or how to feed children and that clearly by serving my daughter juice everyday I am leading her down the path of either obesity or severe tooth decay.

Let me just say this.  I am a vegan.  I am very conscious of what I put in my mouth and in the mouth’s of my children.  I give my daughter juice, but who the hell really cares.  I don’t condemn what other mother’s feed their children – at least not to their face.  The same mother who so proudly ensures that her son drinks only water at lunch also ensures that he has some sort of cold cut sandwich and a Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain bar everyday -so really where exactly does juice fit on this scale?

For the record I am aware of high fructose corn syrup and the other crap that goes into what passes for “food” and “juice” in the supermarket.  For this reason I do a ton of baking, and cooking, and juicing, and shop at health food stores.  The juice I let my children drink is all natural and the only sugar it has is the natural stuff already found in fruit.  Plus, at home I dilute the juice with water – so there!

Writing out of frustration, rather than any intent to illustrate my superiority as a parent.  Some things I do well, some things not so well.  That is life – and I don’t shove my practices in the face of others -so why don’t we all try to grow up and do the same – unless of course someone asks for advice or direction!

The First Mammogram November 28, 2007

Mammogram – sort of a scary word – but not quite as scary as the words – breast cancer.  In a perfectly constructed world the first scary word would automatically cancel out the last two scary words. 

I had my first mammogram today, at the tender age of 38. My mother was diagnosed with estrogen induced breast cancer three years ago.  She subsequently had a lumpectomy and radiation to remove the offender from her body – and so far all has been quiet.  My docotor suggested that I get a baseline mammogram, just to see what is going on. 

A mammogram is a rather subdued experience.  It’s not like going to see your doctor for a regular checkup, where you don’t have any particular illness on your mind – instead your doctor simply weighs, and measures, and pokes, and prods.  However, when you go for your mammogram there is only one thing staring you right in the eye – it is all about breast cancer. 

You sit braless in a waiting room, full of other women, and your mind starts to wander.  Does anyone here actually have breast cancer?  Have they already been diagnosed and are here for a second opinion?  How old are these women?  Why are they here?  You try not to make too much eye contact for fear of catching someone’s teary eye.  You wait for your name to be called.  You slowly get up to follow the tech down the corridor to the mammography room.  You take your robe off and stand there exposed – wondering what is about to happen – wondering what the film might show.  There are some twinges of pain while your breast is pressed between two cold steel plates.  You get dressed and leave – return to the waiting room while the tech develops the film. 

She calls you back in – she needs two more shots of your right breast – you immediately think “Oh my God – this is it.  She’s found something suspicious!”  Out of the corner of your eye you sneak a look at your films posted on the X-ray reader.  It doesn’t look like there is a lump, or a mass, or anything huddled close together on the film.  But what the heck do you know – you  are a writer, not a doctor.  So, today is Thursday.  You are suppose to wait for a call from your doctor.  At the latest you should hear from her by next Wednesday.  That is almost a week.  What should you do until then?