cleanse, day 30

Thirty days. Thirty days without consciously consuming caffeine, red meat or poultry, sugar (or honey or agave or maple syrup or the like), refined flour, dairy, or alcohol.

A few days in and I thought to myself how very daunting it would be. A week or more in, and I was expressing dismay with the beaniness of it all. At every meal shared with friends, I apologized profusely for being such a nuisance, such a bore. Still, I stuck with it. And now, tomorrow morning after I do my gym and swim, I will be free to ease back into a less-restricted diet. Frankly, I have reservations about how much I want to reintroduce. And given that Conrad is out of town for work, I may just stick close to the cleanse diet a day or two more.

You know, I've cooked many things, many meals in my life. I have never, so far as my sieve-y memory can recall, cooked tofu. Heck, I generally avoided eating it until Medgar offered me crispy fried squares of it when we lived in Montreal. I rather like it now, though as with many things, it also depends. Tonight? I liked it.

I started out by sauteing sliced onion and shallot with chopped garlic and ginger in a bit of vegetable oil. Along with the vegetables I cooked some green curry paste to remove the rawness. After the vegetables had softened, I added a can of light coconut milk, then let that simmer to develop the flavour. I can think of other things I would have added if I had them on hand, but some salt was all the seasoning I gave it.

I had pressed the tofu for about an hour to remove excess moisture, then I cut it into rectangular pieces, frying each a bit to lend some colour and bit of a crust to each piece. I added these to the green curry, then added in asparagus I'd cut up. Plump pieces - it's the season (though I'm not as mad for asparagus as I have been in past years). When the asparagus was just tender, I added a chopped tomato, stirred it to heat the tomato, then served it around a mound of basmati rice.



This, happily, was an occasion when my dinner pleased me, the harsh critic of my own cooking.

Also happily: leftovers!

A month of interesting dining and cooking ends, but the habits won't, not entirely. And by gosh, I think I may cook with tofu once again some day.