Dinner Time...

I'd planned to fix vegetarian chili this evening, but the universe decided otherwise. That, and the tofu was bad.

Now, I know there are people out there who are uninitiated in eating tofu. You might even be one such person. That's fine; we all have our food preferences. But trust me when I tell you that tofu has a bland taste and smell, or lack thereof. It is a lot like white bread or vanilla pudding: not exactly exciting, but it does work well in many meals, taking in the flavors of whatever it is cooked in.

So I pulled out everything needed to fix the meal...onions, peppers, a large can of crushed tomatoes, two cans of beans (one black, the other navy), carrots, garlic, and, of course, tofu. I usually drain the tofu in a colander while cutting up the veggies, so I pulled the top off the tofu tub and dumped it into the colander, then turned to get the cats' water bowl to refill it. By the time I got back to the sink, I was hit with a horrible stench that can only be described as a cross between a six-week-old litter box and really funky feet.

I looked at the bottom of the water bowl, then checked my feet, just to be safe. Nothing. Then I sniffed the tofu. Talk about disgustingly rancid.

Into the trash it went. The tub is in a plastic grocery bag, handles tied, along with the receipt. Fortunately, I had some homemade spaghetti sauce in the freezer.

But it got me to thinking about the other weird things than happen with food, things we end up looking back at and laughing at. Some of them are outright good memories: My paternal grandma used to cook what we called turnips, but what are really rutabagas, for Sunday dinner, so I associate the taste and smell as a comfort food. Your grandmother may have made the world's best mac and cheese.

And then there are the weird, funny food stories. For example: My maternal grandmother, Grandma Hallock, was the cookie grandma. Take any of her cookie recipes, and she'd bake them better than anyone else. I've only recently gotten close to being that good with her cookie recipes. My first attempt at making her oatmeal cookies, though, was a failure. The recipe calls for three cups of quick-cook oatmeal (now sold as "old fashioned oats"). So, even though the recipe didn't call for cooking the oatmeal first, I figured it was only logical that if it called for quick-cook oats, you had to quickly cook them first. I then proceeded with the rest of the recipe.

Later, when I took the mixture out of the freezer to cut and bake, it was still a gloppy mess. So, off to Mom to find out what the problem was.

"What did you do to it?" she asked, looking slightly puzzled.

"Well, first I cooked the oatmeal..."

When she quit laughing, Mom asked why I'd done that, then explained that if the recipe doesn't say to cook the oatmeal first, one probably should figure that it really isn't recommended. What can I say; I was maybe 12 at the time. It was an honest mistake.

Then there was the chocolate cream pie. Shortly after my 16th birthday, my parents moved us from Connecticut to Rochester, New York. A week or so later, my boyfriend drove up in my dad's old VW beetle. (We'd left it at a garage, since it needed some repairs before making the trip.) Anyway, Tom loved chocolate cream pie. What's a girlfriend to do but make her sweetie his favorite dessert, right?

That Sunday, the evening before he was to fly back to Connecticut, while dinner cooked, I fixed the pie. It consisted of three things: a baked pie crust, chocolate pudding, and whipped cream. What could go wrong, right?

Turns out, a lot. The pie crust came out the consistancy of a burned yet undercooked pizza dough (it tasted that way, too); I burned the chocolate pudding; the cream was whipped half-way to butter. He was impressed. Turned out the only one who could eat the darn thing without gagging or laughing hysterically was my kid brother. At 9, Greg'd eat anything.

For the rest of his life, my dad would tell me that he'd eat anything I cooked, as long as it wasn't that chocolate cream pie. Siiigggh.

Then there's the lasagna. There was a recipe for the stuff in one of the cookbooks I'd picked up over the years ago, when we first moved to Florida, a funky cookbook titled Country Commune Cooking, by Lucy Horton. I'd made the lasagna numerous times, and loved the stuff. But it needed something...

My oldest tried cooking it once to surprise me on my birthday, but instead of using meat, as the recipe called for, he used cut-up eggplant. Turned out great.

After that, the experimentation was on, and I finally developed a kick-butt vegetarian lasagna. It calls for tofu crumbles in place of the meat, and is absolutely wonderful.

Around this time, a coworker of mine decided I was the one he was destined to spend his life with. He was a nice enough guy, but let's just say the feelings were not reciprocated. He was merely nice...and boring.

One afternoon, several of us were talking about food, and I mentioned my lasagna. Turns out lasagna was guy's favorite food.

"When'll you fix lasagna again?" guy would ask.

"No clue," I'd respond.

One day, I decided to take the day off. Guy calls up to see what I'm doing, just as I'm fixing...you guessed it...a huge pan of lasagna. While I was on the phone, my youngest came into the kitchen and asked, "Are you getting ready to put the lasagna into the oven?" Of course, guy heard that and told me he was on his way over.

Great, I thought. Just what I didn't want after a nice, relaxing day.

The next day, guy made a point of finding me. "That was the best lasagna I ever had!" he gushed. "What kind of meat was that in it?"

"It wasn't meat," I replied.

"Okay, so it wasn't hamburger. What was it? Ground turkey? Chicken?"

"Actually, it was tofu crumbles."

He looked at me funny and asked what tofu crumbles were. After learning it was soybean curd, he got a horrified look on his face, gasped, and asked, "What are you, some kind of vegetarian?" When I replied that I was, he turned and stalked off...never to call or stop by ever again!

If only I'd known months earlier...