library dog

tofu turkey ala let's get baked

The best Thanksgiving meal ever is the vegan tofu turkey they made on Let's Get Baked a few years ago. The internet can be a cruel place sometimes, and that's exactly the case with this recipe - it seems to all have but disappeared (can't even find it on LGB!).

I did track it down eventually, after a few frantic good searches, but to make it easier on myself in the future & to give you some motivation to make something awesome for your Thanksgiving feast tomorrow, I'm replicating it here.

Thanks for coming up with something so rad, Mat & Dave!

Tofu Turkey & Fixin's
Turkey:
5 pounds of firm tofu Stuffing:
2 tbsp oil
1 large onion
1 cup celery,
diced 3 to 4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp marjoram
2 tsp thyme
3 tsp Herb de Provence
1/4 cup soy sauce or tamari
2 cups bread crumbs 1
cup wild cooked wild rice salt and pepper to taste

Basting mixture: 1/2 cup toasted sesame oil
1/4 to 1/3 cup soy sauce or tamari
2 tablespoons miso
2 tablespoons orange juice
1 teaspoon mustard
1/2 cup nutritional yeast

Mash tofu together in a bowl. Line a Colander with cheese cloth and dump tofu in. Use a plate to press out the excess water from tofu. Leave a heavy weight on the plate for an hour or two to drain as much water as possible (preferably in the fridge). Take colander full of tofu and hollow out a place for stuffing. In a sauce pan fry up the garlic, onion, and celery. When they are sufficiently brown mix in the rest of the ingredients for the stuffing thoroughly and dump it into the hole that you have made in the tofu. Pack it tightly and flip onto a baking sheet. Cover the tofu turkey with the basting sauce and bake at 375 for an hour or so until it is golden brown. If you have the time you can cook it longer and a lower temperature and baste it a couple more times for extra amazing flavor experiences. Enjoy!

bowden

"The matriarch is ill. She can't get up, so another matriarch comes over and lifts her to her feet with her tusks. But in a while she falls again, and this time she will not rise. She dies. Matriarchs from other families visit her. They stand over her giant body, their trunks delicately take in the air a foot or so above her. They nudge her carefully with their tusks.

We call this compassion. But of course we hesitate to say the word because we are speaking of elephants and we draw lines on the earth and we draw lines when it comes to other bloods." - Charles Bowden, Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing

breaker

2009 TC / Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition

On the Third Coast International Audio Festival website, you can now stream all the 2009 TC / Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition winning stories.

I've heard a number of the pieces (and even wrote about Hamish Sewell's piece almost exactly a year ago) and am excited to dive in and listen to the rest. Join me.

breece d'j pancake

"I put on my jacket, go into the foggy night, walk toward town. Another hour till dawn, and both lanes of the Pike are empty, so I walk the yellow line running though the valley to Rock Camp. I keep thinking back to the summer me and my buddy Eddie tore that burial mount apart for arrowheads and copper beads gone green with rot. We were getting down to the good stuff, coming up with skulls galore, when of a sudden Grandad showed out of thin air and yelled, "Wah-pah-nah-te-he." He was waving his arms around, and I could see Eddie was about to shit the nest. I knew it was all part of the old man's Injun act, so I stayed put, but Eddie sat down like he was ready to surrender.

Grandad kept on: "Wah-pah-nah-te-he. You evil. Make bad medicine here. Now put the goddamn bones back or I'll take a switch to your young asses." He watched us bury the bones, then scratched a picture of a man in the dust, a bow drawn, aimed at a crude sun. "Now go home." He walked across the pasture.

Edide said, "You Red Eagle. Me Black Hawk." I knew he had bought the game for keeps. By then I couldn't tell Eddie that if Grandad had a shot at the sixty-four-dollar question, he would have sold them on those Injun words: Wah-pah-nah-te-he. - the fat of my ass." - Breece D'J Pancake, "The Honored Dead"

how well the dead weight warms

A grabby moisture's in the air, so we've got our slickened hoods closed around our faces. Rough burred grass is sticking out of the pockets Caleb's wearing; he collected the grass from the cliff he was scrambling up when he lost footing. His life rose then not like a quick slide show in his mind, but as a deep redness in his cheeks and a film of cuss words on his lips.

"You won't believe what I'm about to tell you, because I don't believe myself," is how he's explaining it to the rest of us, who are warming ourselves on weak fire and strong drink.

He goes on in a voice that keeps getting tackled by heaves about the missed markers, blisters rising and ripping on the opposite sides of each foot, the leaves so like butter.

He hung there such a long time, he said, the fibers in his shoulders began to come apart like paper wetted by rain.

The rescue was one as miraculous as improbable—leathery birds, netlike wings. He's not really sure of the details.

At night the baby will sleep all night under a prop of nylon, so deeply it will seemed stunned. Caleb will keep his feet under that baby's back. He'll stay awake, thinking how well the dead weight warms him.