Day 117- Testing Tofu and Bread

So anyone not counting how much tofu I've used (which I really hope is everyone... even *I* don't track that beyond what I see in the fridge) might be surprised to find that I still have some of that tofu left from like a month ago. Or maybe it's three weeks, I really don't remember.

It shouldn't really surprise anyone to find out that I haven't made a huge pile of ravioli to freeze for eating later, either. Honestly, that's a big enough project that you;d have heard of it by now for sure. So I have some tofu left.

Month old tofu, no longer packaged "super safely" in it's little water bucket, since it's all in one *big* water bucket...

So when I went looking for something to eat yesterday in the middle of half-assedly making some bread, I saw the tofu and thought "uh-oh", 'cause I'd already cleaned slime off them once. And when I say "them" what I really mean is 4 half pound chunks of tofu. I had 2 pounds of slowly rotting tofu in my fridge.

Now, there are, I'm sure, whole cookbooks worth of things to do with slightly off tofu. I know there are cookbooks worth of stuff to do with off meat, tofu wouldn't be any different, right? But they're all written in some other language, and I don't have them anyway, so I decided to make a "test" batch.

Now, I could have mixed up a big batch of "ricotta", and proceeded to have a dinner party with mildly toxic tofu. I decided against that. I figure, if I'm going to poison anyone, it might as well be me. I'm slightly more willing to commit suicide than I am to go the homicide route. Not because I hate myself. Oh no.

I just really don't want to go to jail. There are no men there really, after all, and I'm not into chicks. So jail would be totally un-fun.

So, in the interests of preserving my (rather sparse) dating life, I mixed up some fried tofu. With the slightly off tofu. After I washed it a lot, until all the slimy bits came off.

And then I fried it. Extra hot, extra long, until it was just about burnt.

Then I ate.... about half before deciding that slightly sweet, slightly cheese tasting tofu was probably not good for me, and tossed the rest of that batch. I haven't tossed the 1.5 pounds still in water in the fridge. I need to do that next.

If I die in the next 48 hours, it was the tofu. Just letting you know.

Back to the bread.

I wanted bread yesterday. I decided to take an idea I'd seen... somewhere... and make a super wet dough, followed by some serious rising, then bake it to try and make a loaf with those huge bakery bubbles in it.

Then I realized that my kitchen is cold in the morning, and that I wanted bread *NOW*, and well, the extended rising didn't happen. But it would have been great if it did.

While I was working on the bread and the tofu, I also started a head of garlic roasting. I don't know how anyone else does this, but my method works just fine for me, so that's what I use.

Roast Garlic-

• Head of garlic
• piece of aluminum foil big enough to wrap garlic

Then you just drop the garlic (top up) in the middle of the foil, wrap the foil up around the garlic to make a pouch, and toss the thing in the oven at 350 or 400*F for 40 minutes or so. No idea what they did before foil.

Back to bread. So the oven was hot from roasting garlic, which allowed me to just "shape" and bake my bread-type stuff.

About 20 minutes at 400 wasn't enough, so I know that for next time, but it was good enough to spread the head of roast garlic and about $2 worth of EB on it

Ate 3/4 of the "loaf" yesterday, and finished the last of it for breakfast this morning. Om nom nom.

Question- I know all (most?) of you out there aren't vegan (or veggie at all), but has anyone used PETA's Vegan College Cookbook? I saw it yesterday while i was out, and some of the stuff i saw while flipping through it looked interesting and like stuff I might make, but... I don't want to buy it (later) and find out it's a total dud. Anyone?