I have a difficult time cooking meals for my family. Firstly, there are not many non-dessert foods I know of that my kids actually like (Grant is convinced that he is a dessertatarian). Secondly, if I do find a meal they like and make it for them, they stop liking it. Thirdly, I admit I am not a particularly skillful, creative, or even careful chef. (It's hard to spend much effort on something that is destined for the trash can anyway.)
Our wonderful family sit-down dinners that we have almost every night often involve screams of "I hate this", "yuck", "do I have to eat it?" and "how many bites" which is followed by "go to time out" and "you'll sit there until you eat it all." Add a little crying, a lot of whining, and even some vegetables flying and I am sure you get the idea. (And they say family dinners lead to better nutrition and family bonding?) But through it all Dave is my ROCK. No matter what I serve, no matter how badly I cook it, he is my champion. He eats it all, being the good example to the kids and telling me how great the meal was. He has a firm rule that no one says yuck or is disrespectful to his wife at dinner time. He has eaten tons of blue cabbage, pea soup, broccoli soup, spaghetti squash and zucchini- all foods that are not his favorites, all with a smile.
All until the day I put tofu in the stir-fry.
Apparently that was the line, and I crossed it. The kids wouldn't touch it. Dave only ate a few bites and even cracked tofu jokes the whole time. It was kinda like this (that's a tofu turkey they are eating in the clip). For some reason he has a very strongly held (and unreasonable!) prejudice against tofu. And that is when I resolved that I would not rest until I could make a tofu dish that every one, especially Dave would love!!! And I would keep trying and trying until they did! Wahahaha!
So far in my quest I have made two things that have proved acceptable. The first is a chocolate pudding- it calls for blending 1 cup of melted chocolate chips (how can you go wrong with that?) with a package of silken tofu adding a little milk and almond extract and viola! My family is eating tofu!! And loving it! The other is Tofu Parmigiana. It had a 60% approval rating. Dave really liked it and everyone ate it. Only Nina needed coercion. Anyway, so that's my new quest. Anyone have any great tofu recipes?
7 comments:
I love your evil laugh!! I don't have any tofu recipes myself...but I'd love to hear what are some of your other successful recipes (any with beans??)
Gosh! You're super bravo and creative to make food. It's tough to make a dinner to pleasure everyone! Way to go, Missy!
And no, I do not have any recipes with tofu. :S That reminded me need to make one.. :D
ha-ha-ha! Your post and the Raymond episode made me laugh so hard!
We downloaded the song "Eat It" from itunes and for a while we were driving the kids crazy by blasting it every time someone threw a fit about what was for dinner. That Weird Al really knew what he was talking about!
you are so hilarious!!
Oh, Melissa, I can totally relate to the complaining at dinnertime. Some days I feel like, "Why even try?!" But we push on. I don't think I'll ever try the tofu thing with them, though! You're brave. :)
If you want to know what a dessertatairian is they have two stomachs one for dessert and exc. one for dinner and exc..
That was so funny! I'm still laughing. I've heard of tofu in stir fry and how it takes on the flavors of the other foods. It sounded incredulous. I guess you've proven it. We happen to have some silken tofu in the refrigerator. I buy it for Mary once in a while and it usually lasts about 3 months. The melted chocolate chips sound good though.
Dad's supposed to eat more cottage cheese and I've been putting it in a lot of things. I made him strawberry/blueberry cottage cheese smoothy the other day and it was great. Maybe you could slip in a little tofu. Dave likes cottage cheese.
Today I made some experimetntal muffins. Well they started out as Irish soda bread. I decided to add a lot of oatmenal, then I had to put in buttermilk, which I didn't have, so I used cottage cheese. I added eggs because the oatmeal was making it so heavy and finally cinnamon and frozen rspberries. They were great (although a little tough from so much mixing). It's a never to be repeated recipe as many of mine are!
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