Tofu of Despair

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Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

Yesterday I ate an entire pound of tofu. No, wait, actually it was only 14 ounces - hardly anything, as I pointed out to my daughter who was laughing hysterically at this revelation. "That's a lotta fermented bean curd, Mom." "Yeah," I said direly, "My stomach hurts." No kidding, right?

Well. I'm back deep in the land of despair again, living the mother's lament, hanging around in the darkness, darkness, no color no contrast that Joni Mitchell sang about in the early 70s. Things are not good. Things were already not good and they got rather dramatically worse on Saturday night and that's pretty much all there is to that. Kids get into trouble. Then you as the parent feel that you have failed miserably with your entire life but, actually, it is not really your drama here. It is their drama and sometimes the best thing you can do as a parent is step back and away and just hope against hope. And cry a lot. There's always that. The kid is still, after all, alive and healthy and we will leave it there, because this is not a mommy blog. Take it from me, mommy blogging is just not as much fun when the youngest is, supposedly, an adult.

So, enough of that! Life sucks - really sucks - but in a mighty feat I have eaten a pound of tofu and lived to tell the tale! Yesterday, hungover (I suspect there is a healthier way to deal with trauma than many bloody marys but I don't really want to know about it and anyway, think of the vitamins) and depressed, I turned for solace to the refrigerator. I'm on a diet and it seems I will be on a diet forever so the contents of my refrigerator are disgustingly low fat, low cal and low joy. But there was the tofu. I only planned to have a little tofu, you know, but it skyrocketed and it turns out that going on a tofu binge is deceptively simple. Be warned!

It started with tofu salad, to which I am addicted - take tofu, squeeze it mightily in your hands until the water all drains out, crumble the dry tofu into a bowl, add tamari, nutritional yeast, lemon juice, grated carrots and fresh grated garlic and ginger and eat it on crackers. It is good even without the carrots. You can skip the ginger, too, if you wish, but why would you wish? If you get bored while you are squeezing the tofu - it is admittedly kind of gross - then you can slice up the rest of it and soak it in tamari and rice vinegar and then bake it for a while in the toaster oven so as not to heat up the house. Make a sauce with garlic and ginger and tamari and lemon juice and just a little tiny bit of peanut butter and then, having finished the tofu salad, you can eat the chunks of baked tofu moodily with your fingers as you discover that your great plan to reread all your Terry Pratchett books is just not cutting through the malaise and sorrow. After your tofu orgy you will feel kind of peculiar, to put it mildly, but, hey, it's okay: you will actually not have gained any weight. Tofu, freakily enough, is allowed.

It's kind of scary: I've gotten way too good at this weight watchers diet thing. A whole damn brick of tofu is only 10 points, leaving me another 12 points or so worth of food I could have eaten yesterday, although once you have eaten all the tofu, honestly, you don't really care to eat again for some time. Possibly weeks. I knew that eventually I would start gaming the weight watchers system - I can't help myself - and it has happened. I have figured out how to eat basically nothing and still feel full, what with the help of freaky diet food, fruit (it's not all bad, this diet) and, thank the gods, light beer. And tofu.