3: May 2003 Archives

The good news is that I bought tickets last night to go to Romania for three weeks.

The bad news is... well... there is no bad news.

I'm going to Europe for three whole weeks! I can't wait. My travelling feet are so excited.

(I just realized that I bought the tickets while Mercury was in retrograde, which probably explains why I botched the return flight. If that's the worst that happens, I'll be thrilled.)

More info later. My home computer is still in the shop, so it's been tricky updating.

After a 24-hour reprieve, I find myself with a plate of tofu masquerading as turkey. The package arrived with the following:

One tofurkey, filled with stuffing
Four tempeh drumsticks
Soy giblets and gravy
Wishsticks made of tofurky jerky (which shall remain unbroken forever and ever, due to the inherent lack of fairness of an all-powerful wish granter being provided to only one person)

The first thing I tried was the soy gravy, which has the consistency of apple sauce. I put a tiny bit on my fork and ate a bite of mashed potatoes, but the gravy had a weird sweetness to it and a bad aftertaste. Yuck. I'm not a big fan of regular gravy either, so perhaps I'm not a good source of information on that topic.

I have two slices of tofurky sitting here. The first slice was the tofurky heel -- the smallest slice, made mostly of "skin." It's textured like corduroy. The second slice is filled with weird bubbly spaces. I guess real turkey has bubbles, too. At least, I'll keep telling myself that.

Claudia's afraid I'll taint the review by letting the tofurky get cold before I actually try it. I can only wish. Okay, here goes.

...

The texture of tofurky is fairly similar to turkey. It's somewhat chewier, but it doesn't have any of that distinctive turkey flavor. It's sweet -- in part because of the soy sauce, orange juice, and brown sugar it was basted with.

If I eat a bite, then eat two bites of plain mashed potatoes, I can probably make it through both pieces.

...

Okay, two more bites. I can taste the tofu now -- strangely reassuring in the context of mystery "meat," but I don't like the sweetness at all. If they'd just call it "tofu" and not try to make it act like turkey, I'd like it much better.

The corduroy "skin" creeps me out, though. I can't eat that. Sorry. I had to cut it off like a bread crust on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I'm very seven-years-old like that sometimes.

It's Claudia's birthday today. She's 27.

I've been giving her Birthday Choice all day.

For dinner, my goofy vegetarian roommate wanted to eat the tofurky, dressing, and gravy, which have been sitting in the freezer for weeks. I agreed (reluctantly), despite the fact that non-meat that tries to masquerade as meat frightens me greatly.

Yeah, I know. Scary stuff.

I'm not a vegetarian, mind you, but I don't eat beef or pork, which in Texas is practically vegan blasphemy. I'm on pretty friendly terms with tofu. I consider it to be kind of like mushrooms -- innocuous with a harmless texture, and able to absorb the flavors of the foods cooked with it. But when they start texturing it like chicken (or turkey) and adding meat flavors, I get really grossed out. Just give me a potato to bake, will you?

We talked about movies showing around town. Secretly, I was hoping something fabulous would be playing at the Drafthouse so we could eat dinner there, but there was nothing interesting showing.

So Claudia and I went to Central Market to buy potatoes for mashing and some cheap sparkling wine. Nothing goes better with fake turkey than sparkling wine, you know. As usual, the two of us spent close to $40 by the time we left the store. Shopping with Claudia is always an adventure, as she can't make up her mind and I'm easily distracted.

So we came home and Claudia took the tofurky from the freezer. Turns out, the instructions are far more complicated than for a regular turkey. You have to thaw this thing for 24 hours, then roast for several hours while basting the tofurky with soy sauce and orange juice. Needless to say, we didn't have tofurky for dinner tonight. Instead, we had cheese sandwiches, watermelon, and sparkling wine.

Anyway, the tofurky package deal came with tofurkey jerky wish sticks. You know those sentences where you understand each of the words individually, but when you string them together they lose all meaning? Yeah.

So these wish sticks are meant to take the place of the wishbone in the turkey tradition. I had to explain this very American concept to my Romanian roommate.

"Wait, so only the winner gets a wish?" she asked.

"Well, both people make a wish, and then the winner's wish is granted," I explain, as though it actually worked that way.

"But that's not fair!" she exclaimed, putting the wish sticks back into the refrigerator.

Um, yes. Socialism at work.