h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I can eat fermented soy (tofu, tempeh, and soy sauce). Soymilk, tvp and soy flour don't digest well, for me. Quorn products are not soy, they are mushroom based.

I like tofu. I only have it when it's in hot and sour soup, though.

There are very few ways I have not cooked tofu. It was an assignment or mission, depending on how you look at it. When I was Kitchen Mgr. the first thing was 'do something with the menu, but it has to be vegetarian'.

I ate at a vegetarian restaurant in San Francisco. They had fried tofu, which was pretty tasty. They probably also had some gluten shaped in various ways. vegan chefs can be very inventive

I have made tofu burgers many times and a tofu/veggie loaf, a tofu 'meatball and spaghetti' etc. Would you like recipes?

The meatball and spaghetti recipe sounds interesting.

But let's forget about tofu hot dogs.

Light life has a Smart Dog, that is vegetarian and our customers seemed to like them a lot.

Tofu, rinsed and drained
Bread crumbs, oats or other filler/binder
Onions, minced
Sweet Peppers, minced
Soy Sauce, preferably low sodium or Worcestershire sauce (for color and flavor)
Garlic Powder

Mash tofu, stir in the remaining ingredients one at a time, stirring after each addition. After all have been added, blend well, we did this by hand while wearing food service gloves. Then, shape into shape and size you prefer. Place on a lined or sprayed baking sheet bake until a crust has formed that is a golden but not dark brown.

Everything we bakeed was baked at 400 degrees because you DO NOT RESET the bakery bread ovens.

At home, for a small batch 350 would be fine for about 15 to 20 minutes then turn them and bake until they are no longer squishy and a suitable crispy outside. Some like them crustier than others. Same could be said about the bakery staff.

Serve with pasta and sauce of your choice.

This can also be shaped into patties and served on buns with bbq sauce or steak sauce.

I'm too lazy to shape 350 separate meatballs.The most trouble I would go to would be a soy loaf of some kind, baked in my toaster oven. Even more likely than that would be a calzone crust that has some garbanzo flour in it. Red Mill has packages of garbanzo flour that I buy at Whole Foods Supermarket. I eat modest amounts of meat, supplementing it with some vegetable protein. Almost any kind of bean shows up on my plate sooner or later, but I don't want soybeans. They have terrible texture as beans, they don't taste like much, and it takes an effort to cover up the bitter taste of soy flour. Green beans are sweet and tender, Cannelini beans have a buttery taste, black beans have a satisfying meaty taste, fava beans are heavenly and succulent, and roasted garbanzos are satisfyingly crunchy.

Best of all in the 8-bean soup that I make sometimes. It is delectable.

The 350 was the temperature. 1lb of tofu plus the other ingredients would make about 6-8 tofu balls depending on size.

You can drain and puree beans, leave out the tofu and soy sauce and make bean burgers. Everything else is pretty much the same.

There was a time when I made bean loaves regularly. They were nice to eat.