Tofu On My Mind

I visited my sister a few weeks ago and discovered her secrets to home cooked meals at the end of a long work day. Every Sunday she cooks a batch of sesame chicken, sesame tofu, brown rice, quinoa, baked squash and steamed vegetables. When she comes home, she makes up a plate and puts it in the microwave. She even has (well had - it fell on the stove and melted but she will replace it) a special lid for re-heating food on a plate.

She picked me up at the airport, we stepped into the kitchen, and in minutes dinner was ready. My favorite was the sesame tofu. She sent me home with a bag of sesame seeds. My first attempt came out crumbly instead of chunky but tasted just as good as I remembered.

My Sister's Sesame Tofu
1 pound firm tofu drained
1 TBLS vegetable oil
1/2 tsp salt
2 TBLS sesame seeds
1 tsp sesame oil

Heat the vegetable oil and salt and sesame seeds in a frying pan. Add the tofu. Mash it down with a spatula a let it brown on the bottom. My sister says, "This takes longer than you think. If you don't let it brown on the bottom, it will turn into crumbles." Turn. The tofu should end up in large brown chunks. Remove from heat and sprinkle with sesame oil. Crumbles were good too.

I've been hungry for this tofu dish ever since she made it for me. It's a good thing because the whole issue of whether or not to eat meat has just returned to my radar. Here are three articles about meat, the first 2 sent by a friend, the 3rd I read in the news AND on my daughter's blog.

Just for balance I checked out the menu from La Tour D"Argent in Paris to see what they were serving, imagining that delicious would be the guiding principle of their food choices. It didn't help with the beef issue. Their speciality is duck, raised on their own farms.

I'm still thinking. John Muir's famous quote offers the most guidance for now: "Everything in the universe is hitched up to everything else."

The Articles
1. Livestock's Long Shadow Summary of a recent report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization www.fao.org/ag/magazine/0612sp1.htm
The U.N. report says that 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming come from livestock, including chickens, pigs, cattle, and others -- that's more emissions than from cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together. The researchers found that, when it's all added up, the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by going vegetarian than by switching to a Prius.

2. Rethinking the Meat Guzzler http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/012808EB.shtml
In The New York Times, Mark Bittman says, "A sea change in the consumption of a resource that Americans take for granted may be in store - something cheap, plentiful, widely enjoyed and a part of daily life. And it isn't oil. It's meat. If price spikes don't change eating habits, perhaps the combination of deforestation, pollution, climate change, starvation, heart disease and animal cruelty will gradually encourage the simple daily act of eating more plants and fewer animals."

3. Government orders biggest-ever U.S. beef recall
USDA says sick cows weren't inspected - video purportedly shows workers abusing them
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/18/MNBLV4EPE.DTL&hw=meat&sn=002&sc=547