A lesson for life
After donating most of my cookbooks to a local charity shop, I recently broke my resolve to buy no more when my eyes alighted upon this one: Beat Cancer Kitchen: Deliciously Simple Plant-Based Anticancer Recipes, by Chris & Micah Wark.
As far as I know, I don’t have cancer, but I was ready for some new ideas to spice up my somewhat stale repertoire.
I’ve tended to shy away from raw cabbage, chickpeas, beans in tins, tofu, and fresh juices because of their explosive effect upon my digestive system. However, I squared my shoulders, and experimented.
Tofu
Towards the back of the book is a recipe called Easy Baked Tofu. It involves arranging small chunks of tofu on a parchment-lined baking tray and putting it in an oven set at 350° for 20 or 30 minutes. The Pro Tip advised me that doing this would make the tofu more absorbent of juices or spices I may add to it.
As far as I’m concerned, tofu needs all the help it can get to make it tasty, so I carefully followed the recipe to help me get it down my reluctant throat. It was good advice, making the tofu so much more palatable that I’m thinking of serving it up to my next lot of unsuspecting guests as a main course. I may even set it aflame (like Cherries Jubilee) to add to the pizzazz.
This idea of drying out tofu so it’s capable of absorbing better things than it already contains made me stop and think about me.
Am I so full of the juices of my own making – another term for ego – that there’s no room inside me for absorbing anything new?
Maybe I’ve become boringly bland.
Maybe I need to dry myself out so I’m better able to absorb the delightfully juicy and spicy things that life is offering me.
It was worth buying that cookbook!
Cheers, Marlane
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