To all my Family and Friends, I wish you a safe and gluttonousThanksgiving. For those you who are vegetarians, I wish you only a safe Thanksgiving. To add gluttonous would be considered cruel. I’ll explain.
Last year around this time of the year, I heard one of those holiday type stories where they bring up some interesting subject concerning said holiday. This story was in regards to the turkey preparation itself and how vegetarians felt left out of the festivities. To get around this someone came up with the idea of creating a turkey substitute made completely out of soy based tofu. They called it the Tofurkey. Basically, they took a mass of tofu and through some modern means created a simulacrum of a real turkey including the taste. I’m about to paraphrase the reporter who described how the Tofurkey is created:
- “Basically, they take a processed batch of tofu to give it a meat consistency and mix in turkey base flavoring. They then take these lumps of tofu and put it into a mold that’s pressed together and give it the shape of dead plucked fowl.”
I don’t know about you, but the idea of making something that isn’t a dead bird into something that resembles a dead bird is a bit disturbing. I think it would make more sense to do the reverse. But what do I know? Anyway, the story went on to say that it wasn’t just vegetarians that ate these things. It included people of certain religions who had an aversion to eating formerly living things. Of course, soybeans use to be living things too, but I’m not going to get started on that. The reporter stated, after having tasted a bit of it, that as simulacra goes, it was pretty close to the real thing. I’ll take his word at it.
Anyway, be careful and be safe.
Update: I thought the original title sounded like the name of some musical group. The new one is way more awesome.