secret recombinations

tofu.

and potatoes.

with a garlic, mustard, lemon not-quite-sauce.

this was my taking-a-break-from-crazy-final-essay-writing kitchen adventure this week. you can find the recipe I messed with linked here on Pinterest, where it links to this dietician's blog, which you can then follow back to this food and travel writer, who got it from this vegan guy, who saw the recipe in a magazine next to a wine advertisement. pretty much all of those sites display much nicer tofu photographs than mine.

it was pretty neat to be able to trace this recipe so far across the internet. (or would the more fitting metaphor be 'so deep'? or should I ditch spacial metaphors and just say 'so many clicks'?) it's always good to see bloggers crediting wherever they got their ideas, for some reason.

other interesting thing is how much the recipe changed, or didn't. travel writer ditched the leeks. Vegan Dad himself admits, "The original recipe calls for sweet potatoes, which would be quite good, but I had none on hand. It also called for chicken, which I didn't have either." the dietician left out the vegetable stock and pre-baked the tofu for extra crispiness. me? I used the wrong sort of mustard and added onions and garlic instead of paprika. I also sprinkled bacon on some of the leftovers yesterday, which might make the vegan guy cringe--but ah well.

a week or so ago, the following offhand, asynchronous conversation happened:

Carl: Excited to be making some shrimp tacos with mango slaw tonight.
me: Carl. start a food blog. post all these recipes you make. I would be a great fan, if you did.
Carl: All the recipes I use I basically find on the internet. That's my only barrier to starting a food blog: a lack of originality.
me: whatever. your cooking the thing will infuse plenty of originality. that is what food is all about. ultimate remix culture.

all the recipes anyone ever uses these days are probably found on the internet. so what? as evidenced by my chain of recipe links above, food really does seems to embody the ultimate remix culture. even if you use the very same recipe and measure everything precisely, your dijon potatoes with tofu will not be the very same as anyone else's.

and the especially good news is that friend Carl has decided to embark upon a food/music blog, the concept of which I think is most awesome. lovely Tolkien quote and everything.