Bind & CrEATe

The blog’s been busy with sentimental feelings lately, but in the background I’ve been eating – eating lots of good-for-me power foods that’s keeping me sustained. When it reaches Thursday, and I’m feeling at my wit’s end with the week, I almost want to give myself a hug. Hug myself for making meals on Sunday. Hug myself for having things organized and planned. I’m not sure when I became this person, but I like her, and I think I’ll keep her around. Because by this point, I almost don’t care what I shove into my mouth. It’s handy to have a ‘fridge stocked with vegetarian options.

Many of these meals came from – where else – Pinterest.

1. Lentil Meatballs with Spaghetti Squash “Pasta”

I liked these quite a bit. Especially in red sauce. But they must be becoming a “thing.” I saw them featured on another blog this week. The one thing I dislike about Pinterest is the redundancy. It makes me feel much less cool that I’m not the only one making “meatballs” out of lentils, cheese, and breadcrumbs.

2. “Egg” Salad Sandwiches (made with tofu!)

So it was pretty much confirmed this week that low-fat mayo has a remarkable taste. It doesn’t matter if you use egg or tofu – this will taste just like the picnic egg salads of your youth. It tasted as if like there was no trace of tofu. I couldn’t get enough of this and ate three sandwiches for dinner on three separate occasions. The protein was incredible! Looks like I really don’t mind redundancy after all.

3. Quinoa with Lentils & Chickpeas

This was the less-than-stellar meal of the week. It lacked in flavor. What do you know – it was one of my one recipes? I was basically trying to use up some old ingredients and threw this together along with some “Pasta Sprinkle” seasoning. I revved it up on Wednesday by adding some tomato sauce from home. That made this lunch much more tolerable.

I have a lot of baking on the agenda for this weekend. Cupcakes are becoming a slight obsession. I don’t even want to eat them; I just want to pipe icing out of a ziploc bag. It’s the most therapeutic thing I’ve done in weeks.

What’s on your weekly menu?

It’s no secret that food can transport you to another time.

Sitting around the table with family.
Eating that one amazing funnel cake at the county fair.
Baking with a grandmother during youth.

But what about food associations with not-so-great memories?

Because that’s my relationship with tofu. I’m no a hater. I’ve loved the stuff for years. Even though I’ve made some of the worst batches of tofu in the world, I still crave the good stuff.

But, here’s the sore spot. When I used to think, see or dream of tofu (in any form): a person popped into my brain. This was a person I don’t want to see. A former relationship that’s long dead in the water. It all kept going back to him.

I didn’t think I could make tofu as well as he did.
I didn’t think I had the same sort of patience as he did.
I knew I wasn’t him, and I knew I ate his tofu all the time.

The link to tofu in my brain was all wrapped up in that person, and I thought: This needs to stop. I needed to perform some serious image therapy on myself and stop linking food I loved with someone who made me feel such incredible pain. So the other night, I did just that. And the result was well worth it.

I made my own barbeque marinade.
I pressed my own tofu blocks.
I cut my own tofu the way I wanted.
I asked my own roommate to put this in the oven, so a meal would be ready upon arrival.

I prepared, crEATed and enjoyed this meal by myself in my own way. And it was the best tofu I’ve eaten in years.

Recipe: Change-of-Mind Marinade for Tofu