a blog about soybean cake and other essential topics
If eating is the common thought when it comes to bean curd, then supplying the coveted soybean also must come to mind.
U.S. soybean farmers probably have Indonesia on their list of buyers and places to visit. If not, they should. Soybean production in Indonesia is dropping, according to a recent Jakarta Post article.
Buried in the story is some noteworthy market intelligence about, well, tofu and tempeh consumption.
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It’s Sunday and my wife and I have been watching cooking shows on television. We observed techniques and styles - all of which were impressive.
Which reminded me: IÂ just came across this YouTube clip from ShowMeTheCurry (see note in full post before clicking) on how to make tofu paratha, the flatbread that started in the Indian subcontinent.
As you know, I enjoy bean curd. I also dig paratha.
A combination of vanilla, tofu and pumpkin create this cool way to end a hot night. Photo source: Japan Tofu Association
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I’ll get to the ice cream in a moment. Really.
But I want to point out that even when it comes to history, even bean curd can be a tricky topic. Who did what and when can be subject to interpretation and debate, based on what was recorded and what was found.
Well, the Japan Tofu Association is questioning whether Liu An, the grandson of a Chinese emperor, should be given credit as the general inventor of the food.
The U.S. newspaper industry has taken a beating recently. The reasons are many, as we know, including the Internet and changing readership behavior.
Dozens of my colleagues and I lost our jobs in March after our former employer, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, ended its print edition. Certainly, I hope the industry can find some stability.
Among the hardest-hit media companies is the Tribune Co., which owns the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. But this week, reporters at the Los Angeles Times managed to fit into pixels, and I presume print, some nice articles about soybean cake.
They searched the Los Angeles area for tofu makers and filed a dispatch called The joy of soy (accompanied by a great photograph) and instructions on how to make bean curd at home.
There were recipes, too, including one for fried tofu with a vinegar-chili-soy sauce dipping sauce. I know: Yummy.
If GORE-TEX never looked right on you and you’ve always hankered for more bean curd in your life, the free market has an option.
Knitwit, a California-based women’s clothing company, announced Friday that its new “Tofu Cashmere Fall 2009 Collection” will be ready in late July.
The clothing line - which includes a printed zip hoodie, crew-necks and wraps – is made up of 15 percent cashmere and 85 percent soybean, the company said. Clothing pieces start at about $110.
The company touts that the clothing line comes from the unused protein of tofu, soybean milk and soybean oil.
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Former Beatle Paul McCartney is encouraging people to stop eating meat each Monday as a way to curb greenhouse gas from farm animals and help the environment, British and U.S. media reported this week.
The United Kingdom campaign, called Meat Free Monday, launched June 15 with support from other celebrities, including Yoko Ono and Kelly Osbourne.
One reason for this campaign to address global warming, according to a Bloomberg report, is that:
Cows, pigs and sheep bred for human consumption discharge millions of tons of methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Livestock accounts for about 18 percent of greenhouse gases, more than all the world’s cars, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has said.
If eating soybean cake, thinking about recipes involving the food and reading articles about the topic are not enough for you, The New Yorker is offering tofu cartoons for sale.
That is, if you’d like to add a cartoon to your, ahem, possibly large collection of tofu art.
The august Conde Nast publication is listing them at its Cartoonbank and selling them from about $20 to $350. The nine selections range from 1990 to this year and include some original cartoons for sale.
You can get framed prints or your favorite tofu cartoon in the form of a PowerPoint slide or reproduced on a note card, T-shirt or sweatshirt.
My aunt, Nellie Wong, sent this touching vignette about tofu shopping about 50 years ago in Northern California.
It was an important task at the time – their family had nine people. My grandparents and some of my aunts were from the Taishan area of Southern China.
In the United States, they all called Oakland home. These days, my aunt is a poet and writer. You can read more about her at the bottom of this post.Â
As a kid, we called it ‘ow fu’ in the Hoisan dialect (of Cantonese). Buying bean curd was organic, if you will. I’d take a dime, maybe a quarter, went to the store and asked for a quarter’s worth. The storeowner or clerk would slice a chunk off of a huge piece of bean cake on top of a round tree trunk.
There was no such thing as silken tofu then nor whether we’d need to ask for soft, medium or firm. We got what was there, sitting placidly (for) a food that was good for us, but when cooked up with fermented black bean, steamed or wok-tossed or putting cubes of it in a clear soup, our stomachs were in ecstasy.
I smile when I note, today, that ‘ow fu’ is rather expensive in those boxes covered with cellophane at health food stores. But there are always the local, crowded Asian markets that sell bean cake sitting in a tub of water and the price is usually one buck for six or seven squares. No company logo attached.
Washington Redskins’ football player Mike Williams is trying to lose weight – but he doesn’t want to eat soybean cake because he believes it lacks taste, washingtonpost.com reported Tuesday.
As part of Williams’ diet, bison meat is one possible substitute for steak, Dan Steinberg noted on his sports blog at the Web site.
Williams, a 380-pound right tackle, talked about tofu right after he discussed how bison has less fat than steak. Earlier, Williams weighed about 450 pounds.
Steinberg writes:
I was impressed. I recommended he maybe check out the tofu aisle; ‘I don’t think I like tofu,’ he said. ‘You know, because it’s bland.’ Not so, but in any case, whatever Williams is doing is working.
Tofu is loaded with protein. It’s low in saturated fat. It lacks cholesterol. If the tofu you’re eating has calcium, that’s another plus, too.
These are some of the conclusions of dietitian and author Jo-Ann Heslin, who recently posted a piece - “Tofu – Think Outside the White Block” – on HealthNewsDigest.com.
Using tofu can help reduce the risk of heart disease, she writes in her post. “No one is suggesting that tofu alone is a magic food but as a substitute for higher fat, higher cholesterol, lower calcium choices it is a healthy addition to your diet,” she says later.
She touches upon one controversy swirling around soy – specifically isoflavones used in supplement form. That is, if eaten as a supplement in large amounts, the risk of breast cancer might increase.
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