Tofu Is NOT Just for Vegans (Part 2)

(Took me a minute to get back to this. It's been about 3 weeks since I started thinking of doing these tofu posts. I've had to go in and re-write and clean up some of this. Hope it's not too disjointed. My blog posting is always way out of step with my life. But here ya go.) 

Let me say this right now. I am not making fun of people who choose to go meat-free - for whatever reason.

But.

Not the first time it's been said, I'm sure

I'm not a vegetarian but I love fruits, vegetables, and some "plant-based" foods. I just don't like to exclude foods from my diet unless I just don't like them.

This is so true. 
Meat eaters can be mean too.

To my V brothers and sisters: You don't OWN healthy eating. Let's just all get along because you know what is NOT healthy: animosity.

Anyway. Moving on. 

Nope. I'm not finished with my rant yet.

Here's the thing: I am so tired of my vegetarian and vegan ( I hope they don't mind that I call them "vege-vegans") friends and acquaintances who either try to make me feel bad for eating meat or tend to get passive-aggressively proud of their choices. There are vege-vegans in my family. We don't have problems. When we share meals, there are options for all of us. My vegetarian niece has been amazing. She's giving me tips and pointers and offering to pay for specialties. I've got it though because tofu I can afford!

How can any vege-vegan go around claiming a product as exclusively theirs? God didn't give soybean products to only some of us. If you make a piece of bark taste as good as some beef jerky, I will break your fingers taking some!

You can't win with some folks

When I first began looking into using eating more vegetables and using tofu in place of pork, I did so for health reasons. Period. I mean, I love most animals but I don't worship them.

And, here's the real reason for my diet changes: I'm getting old. I can't lose weight like I used to be able to. And, okay, I also can't afford the meat products I used to buy. I live in the freaking food belt of America and have to make serious life choices before purchasing a pack of bacon. Ridiculous. Also, depending on the fruit or vegetable, the same budget issues come into play.

I started out mainly wanting to look at just experimenting with some alternatives. I knew I needed to cut back on the pork and cow but wanted to keep up on my protein. The first thing I did was to look for recipes and information. When looking for recipes, most times what I found was too much information about why someone can't stand eating meat. Or why they think that eating meat is cruel or terrible or selfish, etc. It was almost enough to make me go back to beef and find some new ways to cook chicken. 

I love to season and grill veggies to eat as a topping for
tofu, shrimp, or rice - or to smother a beef patty with!

Just trying to check out some meatless dishes was frustrating. I was almost craving a pork chop after scrolling through 10 minutes of one person's conversion-to-veganism story while just trying to get to their 4-line recipe. (It wasn't even that great.) I was thinking that I should be so diligent at spreading the Gospel of the Lord!

Anyway.

In spite of the common annoyances, I have compiled quite a few cooking videos and saved some decent-looking recipes that focus on meatless dishes I want to try. But again, I'm doing this for me - not the animals or the peer pressure.

All kidding aside. I respect people for doing what they think is healthiest for their life. If eating meat turns you off, that's fine. Just don't try to make the rest of us feel like it is a heaven or hell issue. Rant over.

Now. This is how I am doing.

To be totally honest, this whole being healthy kick is about to kill me! I am eating better and trying to exercise more. Sometimes that gets me into trouble. 

Here is a true story: The other week when I was being diligent about getting some exercise and was on one of my walks, my brain went on strike. Somehow, I totally lost my bearings and had a full-on anxiety attack trying to remember where I was and how to get back home. I spent maybe a whole 3 minutes fighting back tears and embarrassment before I remembered that I track my walks with a GPS app on my phone. I spent another minute trying to orient myself before I realized I was less than 3 blocks down the street from my building. On the positive side: I probably lost a full pound during my little freak-out. Now I make sure to look carefully around every now and then and take stock of where I am in relation to my home. Thankfully, the diet is going better than the exercise...

***UPDATE*** 

Don't get that tofu press I used. That thing broke about 2 days before the deadline to return it. The seller was adamant that their press doesn't break. Another customer (who had the same problem as I did) answered my question about fixing it. The seller wanted me to go through all kinds of hassle to return it. Amazon simply refunded my money. So do with that info what you will. Personally, I will be replacing this one with another one if I can't fix it.

Prior to my recent birthday, I asked for and got a tofu press. (I also got a non-stick skillet, some earbuds, and one of those weighted blankets that I will talk about in another post. Talk about a wonderful concept!!!) But back to the food thing...

As I mentioned in the previous post, tofu is fairly cheap. I don't know what it costs in different areas around the nation but I can get a 14-ounce pack of firm or extra firm for just under 2 dollars. Maybe that's due to the whole living surrounded by endless fields of soybeans?  and I can make 3 and possibly 4 meals from each pack. That's money, as the kids say. Literally. 

This is the tofu brand I get from Aldi's:

low cal, low sodium & potassium with decent iron content

The Noya tofu press I got made the top of someone's list of presses.

FYI: This press stopped working
after under a month...
no es bueno.

In addition to tofu, the other food I have finally found locally - just down the street in a tiny health food shop - and gave a try is canned and fresh jackfruit. I'm almost certain that coming from a Main Street shop in a tourist town, I won't able to afford it. As a backup, I located a couple of brands of the canned-in-water variety online that won't suffocate the life out of my grocery budget as long as I don't get carried away. That would put the budget on life support. Why the heck is it so expensive to eat healthily? If beef and pork were just a bit less expensive, I wouldn't bother... But I did bother and I will not be using jackfruit on a regular basis.

The little "eyes" put me off some

All prepped it looks a LOT 
like shredded meat

My finished sammich looks EXACTLY like a bbq meat 

Jackfruit makes a great substitute for the pork, chicken (or beef) in a bbq meat sandwich. However, it takes 10 years, 6 months, and forever to prep it. I had to drain it soak it, rinse it, boil it, cool it down, marinate it, and rest it - all that before I even go to the cooking it part.

Seasoned and cooked up in a pan with some sauces, jackfruit was pretty amazing. Again though, too much work for too little reward. Also, as good as it was, I couldn't deal with those gelatinous little pods of what looks like tiny eyes. Ugh! That grossed me out. If I hadn't had to spend all that time soaking, boiling, and resting it after cleaning out those nasty little things, I never would've bothered eating it. Still, like I said, too much work. I got enough usable fruit for maybe 4 sandwiches. I don't know. After I ate the first 2, I threw out the rest because I made the mistake of thinking about those little pod things again... I will just stick with the tofu, thank you very much.

As far as tofu goes, I have found that I don't have to look for a bunch of recipes. I can improvise. The stuff only tastes like whatever you want it to. I call it the chameleon of the dining table. I just add seasonings or sauce and I can pretty much to-faux up any dish. Just wait until I get my hands on some of the silken stuff to make pudding and pies with!

Never fear though. I have not gone completely plant-food crazy. I indulge in the occasional beef burger. It's cheaper to just grab one when I'm out than to bother buying a pack of ground beef since I won't use it up. Mostly though, my current diet consists of anything I can find on sale that doesn't pack on the pounds so fast:

• Shrimp (I got a $13 2-pound pack of jumbo-sized shrimp last week. Just 3 shrimp (shrimps?) cooked with some mixed veggies, onion, garlic, and maybe a little bit of Teriyaki sauce makes a pretty filling meal, believe it or not. I can't believe I was able to have shrimp for 3 meals in a row one week. (Oh, Alaska, how I miss your seafood!)
• Mixed veggies - they go with anything. Tofu, potatoes, rice, or just plain sauteed with some oil and seasonings.
• Collard greens, cabbage, spinach. I love my collards and it gives me a chance to sneak in a piece of smoked neckbone. I can whip up some hot water cornbread and make a mash of it with cabbage or greens and be perfectly happy. I call it "Country Mash".
• Potatoes. A throwback from childhood is to pan-smother some salted-and-peppered thin or thick-sliced potatoes with onions, garlic, and sweet peppers for a cheap, one-dish meal. And I love potatoes even though I can't eat them often. The one thing I don't do like Mama is to fix hoecakes to go with the potatoes. (Hoecake is a throwback dish from slavery. It's a basic flour, water, and salt dough made into patties that would, way back in the day, be placed on a hoe and cooked over an open fire. Mama would fry ours in a cast iron pan lightly coated with oil. We would eat them savory for dinner, with potatoes and gravy, or sweet for breakfast with butter and syrup. It's one of the original "struggle" meals. Talk about mothers "making a dollar out of fifteen cents!)
• Rice is a lazy-day meal. I can fix a pot of rice and eat some of it with salt and pepper and turmeric, some with sweet vanilla soymilk and fresh nutmeg, or some with those mixed veggies. Rice settles my stomach when I am nauseous and soothes me when I need comfort.
• Beans. Pinto beans are my favorite but I also like black, navy, red, chickpeas, and lentils. I like to roast canned chickpeas with some olive oil and a little salt to eat as a snack. It can get a little powdery after several mouthfuls but it's tasty stuff.
• Peanut butter on a thick nutty piece of whole-grain bread. I buy or make bread that is filled with all kinds of grains and nuts. Peanut butter slathered onto a single slice is my favorite snack these days. Also, peanut butter tastes great on bananas. Or just by the spoonful. I recently got some cheap (maybe too cheap?) almond butter and it's not as yummy as peanut butter, in my opinion.
• Grapes and melons are really the only fruit I love to eat by themselves. But I have to catch them on sale or they can be way too pricey.

(I wish I could eat fresh hot cornbread with cold buttermilk the way my dad loved it. I have never had buttermilk except cooked into cakes and bread. I don't think I could take the texture by itself.)

That's pretty much my food intake these days. I don't get bored with what I eat because I like to play with spices. Even though I try hard to be mindful of my sodium intake, there are just some spices, sauces, and seasonings that are must-haves:

• Salt, pepper, and cayenne
• Old Bay
• Turmeric
• Famous Daves Rib Seasoning (and the Chicken Seasoning)
• Cavender's Greek Seasoning (both regular and salt-free)
• Lawry's Seasoning Salt
• Barbeque sauce (I love Carolina style and honey flavored)
• Teriyaki, Soy, Sweet & Sour Asian sauces
• Worcestershire (if you need Grammarly to spell it, you probably shouldn't eat it!)
• Onion, garlic, paprika powders
• Liquid Smoke

I cannot tell you how much I love Liquid Smoke... And a good barbeque sauce. 

And a couple of other things I keep in the fridge that I make for myself: a jar of garlic and onion-infused olive oil. and a jar of garlic-infused water. 

Someone told me a while back about how to keep my cilantro and green onions around longer. The onions are actually growing back so... talk about a money saver. The cilantro is not something I can use a lot of at one time so it's nice that it has been holding up well for a couple of weeks.

With these staples, I can be a very happy and well-fed woman. I don't really miss the pork or the beef. Because I have cut back on these things, I don't buy those lovely Mama Cozzi take-and-bake pizzas on the regular like I used to. I don't like cheese "what-is-the-point" pizzas and for some reason, one of my doctors told me to be careful of eating too much cheese. This is why I don't keep anything but goat cheese around. Goat cheese and honey is amazing and goat cheese also goes really well with grapes and other fruits.

Oh! I almost forgot to talk about beverages. I am still trying to do the 64 ounces of water every day. Coffee is still my best friend but I find myself doing more tea now. I can drink tea sans cream better than I can the coffee. Also, I have a bunch of those flavored teas now: fruits, peppermint, lavender, and mint. I drink quite a bit of chocolate tea and cascara tea is good cold. I don't get as much from sparkling water as I used to. They make me crave something sweeter. 

Anyway. There you have it. I have gone vege-healthy while not going vege-vegan. I feel better most days. I'm not running marathons and I don't feel magically healed but I am less bloated. I do think that I sleep better. Or maybe that's because I'm exhausted from all lack of sugar and caffeine! 

Seriously though. I have nothing but respect for vegetarians who are trying to be healthy. Just please, no lectures about why everyone else in the world needs to follow your lead. 

Peace

--Free

P.S.:

I am serious about trying to do desserts with silken tofu. If and when I do, I will let you know how it went.

Tofu Is NOT Just for Vegans (Part 1)

 Let me start by saying this: I can eat the moo out of some cow and, until a few years ago, believed in the rooter-to-the-tooter method of pork consumption. The reasons I've started eating tofu are:

1.  I got tired of finding ways to cut back on calories,
2. Chicken can be pricey, ground beef gets boring, and pork is just not nice to my body, and
3. I actually like the taste of tofu.
4. And I believe it can actually be a good thing.

Years ago, I tried tofu for the first time. It was slices of well-seasoned, braised tofu that tasted like pork. My best friend's sister brought it home from an Asian take-out for me to try. Talk about delicious. After that, I bought some tofu as a lark. I scrambled it up and my auntie and I ate it with - get this - bacon! Yes, we did. It was our idea of a fun breakfast. And, it wasn't bad. A little spongey but not bad. My aunt who was a true old-fashioned chitlin'-eating, steak-loving, Texan liked that tofu dish so much that she began fixing it on the odd occasion. She liked the way it tasted - soggy-spongey texture and all.

But for me, I was over it.

More recently, but still a long while back, my vegetarian niece turned me on to jackfruit. She had some strips of it done up as barbeque and it was also a delicious thing to try. However, jackfruit was not cheap in Alaska nor is it easy to find where I now live.

found at NoraCooks.Com

At the time that I am writing this, it is my 60th birthday. I feel blessed to be here but I want to make this sarcoidosis mad and live a little longer than it wants me to. I am walking when I can and trying to lose some weight and eat better. That's where the tofu comes in.

I have made tofu burgers and that went much better than I expected. I accidentally did some things right and the tofu patties were nicely seasoned and crispy. When I threw some ketchup, mayo, tomatoes, and onions on the bread, I really didn't taste bland tofu. It was very burger-like.

My method for prepping the tofu - and, trust me, prepping the tofu is the key to it all - was to casually toss the packages of extra firm tofu into the freezer. Not because I knew what I was doing but because I wasn't ready to do anything with it yet. 

That tofu was in the freezer for a few weeks before I got around to using it. I wanted a burger but was out of ground beef. I didn't want to spend money outside of my regularly budgeted grocery plan. But I really, really wanted a burger.

I put the frozen tofu in the fridge to thaw whole I looked up "how to cook tofu". I learned from one site that the best way to prep extra firm tofu is to freeze it once or twice, then thaw and drain it really well.

I didn't want to re-freeze the tofu because I was impatient. So, moving right along. Where freezing tofu was simple, draining it takes time and the patience of Job. 

This is where I learned about something called a "tofu press". 

Oh boy.

I don't have a tofu press and, based on quickie research, I will need to take out a loan for that at a later time. In the meantime, I got a general idea and came up with my own method. I took the container that the tofu came in, cut slits in the hard plastic, and turned it upside down in one of my large faux Tupperware containers that has a lid. I put the tofu on top of the slits, sat the Tupperware lid on top of the tofu, and rested some cans of soup on top of that.

Slowly the water was draining from the block of tofu. I can't believe how much liquid came out of that thing. Finally, when I thought the tofu was drained, I wrapped it in paper towels and did the whole cans-on-top thing again. And again. And one more 'gin, as Katt Williams says. 

The tofu shrunk down to almost half the original thickness. Crazy. And it felt different - very rough and still kind of spongy.

I was able to slice the tofu into patties. Then I marinated those in a mix of low sodium soy, Worcestershire sauce, garlic water, and turmeric.

Then I realized I couldn't find the Panko breadcrumbs I swore I had. I ended up using some Hooter's Wild Wings breading powder that I really don't remember buying but that was in my freezer for safekeeping.

Okay.

I mixed up an egg and some heavy cream to dip the tofu in before coating the slices in the breading powder. That's when I realized that one of the slices still had quite a bit of liquid in it. Oh well.

Using a little oil as possible, I fried the tofu to a deep brown, drained them really well on paper towels over some newspaper. 

Not pretty but pretty tasty

And, ta-da! I had the tastiest non-meat burger ever. I ate two before I realized that I was racking up bread calories. I ate a third tofu patty, no bread, condiments, or veggies needed. The tofu tasted only like what I had used for the marinade.

I have 2 patties left in the fridge and I guess I can heat and eat those another day.

Now that I know how tasty tofu can be, I have collected some video recipes for "tofu chicken pieces", "tofu cheesecake", and "tofu barbeque". Yum.

Here's the best thing: tofu only costs around $1.50 to $2.00 a pack. I can make a lot of cubed barbecue tofu from a single pack. And another good thing is that the extra firm tofu I tried is only 320 calories for the entire package. I made 5 patties so that was 64 calories each. See? The bread really was the calorie culprit! But I didn't have regular buns so I used the better-for-me Health Nut sliced bread. Win-win.

The only thing I don't like about tofu is when I look up recipes and have to get all the commentary about why people are vegetarians. It's as if people sharing these recipes think you have to belong to PETA to like tofu. And I really hate when they vegan-ize an entire recipe. I am ignoring all the dates and carob in the cheesecake recipe I saw. All I need to know is how to make the tofu into a batter. It should do very nicely with the good old graham cracker crust and whipped cream topping I will use!

So, to sum up the changes I've made to my life in the past couple of months:

• Trying to get out and walk in the fresh and mostly-COVID-free air
• Drinking more chocolate and tea in place of coffee with all it's fattening enhancements, and
• Working hard to replace red meat and pork in my diet.

I joked to my best friend that I am going to get a t-shirt for walking that says "Walking it off" because I have been cooking my butt off. The saying should be "cooking your butt ON" because it sure adds pounds.

Who knows if all this will help make me feel better but at least I am putting up a fight.

Next time, I'll address "tofu-vangelism" and vegan vigilantes.

Peace

--Free