Trying Tofu

Tofu. Ick.

No, seriously, I hate tofu. I hate the texture of it. I hate the idea of it... soft, tasteless, dissolve in your mouth ickiness.

I am not a big fan of tofu.

I know I've eaten it because I've had lots of Thai food that has snuck tofu in under the radar. "Wait... was that a piece of chicken... that didn't feel like chicken... ick!". I never got to the point of doing a seek pick-out mission in my Pad Thai... not like I would do with mushrooms. I just tried to pretend it wasn't there...

And, going whole-food, plant-based... well... you know tofu and I were due to have a show-down. I know it's a great source of protein but I had also heard all sorts of horror stories about it mucks with your hormones and causes breast cancer. So... I kept a wide berth around tofu. We could just eat legumes... yes... lots and lots of legumes.

Last fall, we tried a meal delivery service and... one of their meals was sesame-crusted tofu. We thought... let's give it a try... it can't be that bad.

Just take a hunk of tofu, cut it in half horizontally... coat it with sesame seeds and fry it up. Easy... and it looked tasty on the picture (at left). Right?? Looks good, doesn't it! But... photos can lie...

As we tried our first bite of pillowy tofu... both of us looked at each other. "Umm... not the greatest... let's try another few bites." After two bites, my partner couldn't take it anymore. I think I made it halfway through my slab of tofu but... eventually even I had to admit defeat. We looked at the poor, sad tofu... then at each other and both agreed... "Let's go get take-out burgers". That was our one and only fail with that particular meal delivery service.

Fast forward nine months and we are trying another meal delivery service... one that offers animal-protein-free options (i.e. vegan). And... as part of that... they use a lot of tofu. We were a bit skeptical but... a friend of ours who eats plant-based had said that the trick with tofu is to cut it into cubes and then stir-fry it... make it nice and golden and crispy. This new meal delivery service seemed to use that method. So... we sucked up our courage and tried again.

The first meal we had from this new meal delivery service was a teriyaki stir fry with tofu... and... cue the music... it was amazing. We both licked our plates. What the heck?? It was easy to cook... and... it was yummy and, since it used extra-firm tofu, we could almost convince ourselves that it was a piece of well-cooked chicken. (see pic below) Yum!

We dove into tofu recipes with both feet and have tried different options... some from the meal delivery service and some from home.

Last week we made a Yellow Thai Coconut Curry with potatoes, carrots and tofu. It is one of our favourite meals from Thai restaurants and we thought... we'll try it at home, except, instead of chicken, we'll make it with tofu. It was seriously scrumptious.

Now... I know what you're thinking. Our massage therapist expressed the same concerns... tofu is bad. It mucks with your hormones and causes breast cancer.

No.

You would need to eat boat loads of tofu and drink tanker trunks full of soy milk to get those sorts of problems. In moderation (like all things), one or two servings of soy products (soy milk, tofu, edamame beans, etc) per day is beneficial. And, like most things, try and get soy in the least processed form... the more processed it is... the worse it can be (like all foods).

When I met with a dietician last fall, she recommended soy products for menopausal hot flashes. I asked her about the "dangers" of soy products and she told me what I just told you. For those interested, Runner's World has a nice overview of the whole soy debate. There are other articles out there but I liked this one because it was fairly comprehensive and accurate.

Now... the one thing with stir-frying tofu is... it has to be fried in oil... which isn't great so... we are going to pull back the reins of this method of consuming soy and restrict ourselves to once or twice a week. We still have our excellent stable to legume recipes and are going to treat stir-fried tofu recipes (like Yellow Thai Coconut Curry and Pad Thai) as treats... Sigh...

Our Experiment with a Meal Kit

Have you received some of those meal kit flyers in the mail? Or been invited to try them by a friend? We got a GoodFood flyer in the mail last June, offering us three free meals and decided to give it a shot.

We had multiple reasons... our lives had gotten super hectic and it was becoming a challenge to get healthy meals onto the table at dinner time. We'd forget to take something out of the freezer and, utterly pooped at the end of the day, fall back on ordering pizza/curry/chow mein via delivery. Which wasn't really helping our budget at all... nor our health. I had been following an American finance blogger who had tried HelloFresh and he said it had helped them. So we though... "why not"...

While there are a few meal kit options in Canada, we went with GoodFood purely because we had a coupon. The promo pics looked good as well - lots of fresh produce and the online recipes were mouthwatering! We chose to order three meals/week with a delivery slot of Fridays. That meant we could have the weekends free and clear. We wouldn't have to think about what to cook, etc.

GoodFood is Good Food!

A GoodFood recipe - mmm
Paprika-Honey Salmon with Lime Sour Cream
over Bulgur with Peas & Roasted Peppers

Our first box arrived and... it was amazing! The recipe cards were easy to follow and everything was perfectly portioned out. Just the right amount of vinegar or carrots or noodles or spices. It was also quick... we could whip a meal together in 30 minutes or less. Their selection/variety was good too - a mixture of meats and even some vegetarian options. The recipes also had some ethnic diversity, introducing us to to exotic flavours from Asia, Africa and the Mediterranean.

Ordering was super easy - just go online, scroll through the options, choose the three meals and voila, Done. And we could make changes up to a week before our delivery date. I loved it!

Overall we gave most of the recipes a 9/10 or 10/10. We were wanting to lick the plate sometimes... they were that good. Except for one recipe... it was the slabs of sesame crusted tofu that we were told to fry in the frying pan. Neither one of us are entranced by tofu and the thick, wobbly slabs were... unpalatable... and actually inedible for both of us. That was the only fail out of dozens of meals.

Oh, and they are Canadian - based out of Montreal - go Canada!

What the contents of a GoodFood box
really look like.

The Not-so-Good

Now... there were also some downsides... First up... the way the food is delivered. It's not like that oh-so-eco-friendly picture above. When you you open the box... it looks more like this...

Everything is bundled in plastic. Each meal (except for the meat) is bundled in a big ziploc bag containing smaller plastic packages with the individual ingredients - lentils, noodles, rice, diced squash, farro, etc.

There are also small plastic screw-top containers with spices, vinegar, miso sauce, curry paste, etc. That's a LOT of plastic. We kept the little plastic containers as they were useful for seeds and what not. But the plastic bags were a bit much.

The other thing I noticed was that the little plastic containers were not labeled. So it was kind of a guessing game as to what was what. There was one time where I mixed up the red wine vinegar with a ponzu sauce or something. Not disastrous since we could scramble to recreate the sauce from our ingredients in our own kitchen but... still... why not label the little containers and vials? Their promo pics show that their containers all have labels but none of ours ever did.

GoodFood promo pic with labeled
plastic containers

The box itself was cardboard with some internal waffle cardboard partitions, some of which had a reflective coating on them. Mostly recyclable.

The food was kept cold by some plastic ice packs. According to the GoodFood site -  "The solution in the ice packs is a water and salt gel designed to get colder than ice. Pop them in your freezer for future uses, or snip off the ends and pour the all-natural solution in the toilet. You'll be left with the plastic wrapping which you can drop into your recycling bin."

Opening a GoodFood box

We tried popping the ice packs in our freezer but... our freezer quickly filled up with ice packs! No one needs that many ice packs... so eventually they went down the toilet. In the packaging department... GoodFood was not so good for the planet.

On top of that... as the weeks/months went on... we found that our grocery/food budget actually went UP! The GoodFood meals cost about $12-15/person/meal. So each week (3 meals) we'd be spending around $70 or $90. Multiply that by 4 weeks and... our GoodFood spending was about $300/month. Which is, honestly, a bit excessive considering our entire grocery budget is around $550/month. True, our eating-out/take-out expenses went down to zero but... all it really did was transfer that to the grocery category. And... we still had to cook four other dinners/week soooo... GoodFood was not so good for our budget.

Easing away from GoodFood

In August, after a couple of months of trying GoodFood, we started skipping weeks. We had visitors... we were away... whatever. We decided to try making some of our favourite GoodFood recipes from scratch using the recipe cards we already had. We found a few that worked quite well (a yummy red lentil curry) and I even tried pulling some new recipes off the GoodFood site. It's much cheaper to make the meals from scratch (duh) but not as convenient... you actually have to measure 30 g of ginger instead of just using what they give to you!

Over the last few months, though, as we've modified our eating plan... the GoodFood recipes don't fit in too well. While they have some vegetarian options, most of those include things like dairy. So... it's unlikely we will be going back to GoodFood, or trying another meal kit.

That's not to say it wasn't a good experience. For this apprentice-chef... it was great to be guided through a process and to see how easy it can be to create yummy flavours with just a few simple ingredients. We were also introduced to some not-so-familiar ingredients like farro, bulgur wheat, udon noodles and goodness knows what else. So there are some tips and tricks that have had a lasting benefit. Have you tried a meal kit? Did you like it?