Quinoa: The Best or A Bust?

After reading “The Death of the Moth” this week, I decided to pay close attention to the “insignificant” things in my life. Like Woolf had done with the moth, I observed the “insignificant” preparations for my meal. I was making dinner after a long afternoon of yearbook duties and finishing my homework. As I began to prep for cooking, I noticed how different each ingredient was and how essential each step was to the process.

First, the tofu. Here are some thoughts that ran through my mind while I prepared the tofu:

• Why do people hate tofu so much? Yes, it can be bland and the texture can be unwelcoming at first, but it just needs some love. Add some spice and toast that tofu and you’ve got a perfect protein source for dinner.
• What exactly is tofu? This prompted me to search how tofu was made. Here’s the process, broken down and shortened (see pictures below if you're as intrigued as I was about tofu)
• I was particularly interested in the origin of tofu. The word tofu is technically Japanese but the food originated in China. The Mandarin term is “doufu”
  
  
  
  
  
• Lastly, where was the best tofu I had ever had from? I thought about the countless places my vegan friends took me and strangely enough, the place that has the best tofu, is Sy Thai, an Asian restaurant on Big Beaver. Their tofu is the perfect combination of toasted and spiced and goes along so well with a spicy Pad Thai.


I then moved onto the lesser ingredients. The tofu was the main star of the dish but the other ingredients made the dish what it was.


The butternut squash:
• What is the difference between butternut squash and regular squash? Despite having had both on multiple occasions, I did not know the difference.
• I learned that in fact there are many variations of squash. There are so many, they are split up into two categories: winter and summer squashes.
• The butternut squash is best served as a winter squash whereas green and yellow zucchini make for the perfect summer squash.
• How did they get the frozen squash into such perfect cubes?
• I knew the answer to this was a simple machine but nonetheless, these squares were literally perfect. Not a variation in sight. Kind of scary to think about but I won’t go down the technology could take over our lives path.


The rice and quinoa mix:
• Yet another thing I had picked up from the frozen section at Fresh Thyme. I could have just made plain white or brown rice that we already had at home, but the red quinoa sounded good in the moment. Let me give you a little spoiler...the quinoa was not good.
• I forgot that I don’t really like quinoa. I went through a phase (as did every teenager with social media) where I only wanted to eat trendy foods. My quinoa phase came a little after my avocado toast phase.
• To me, quinoa tastes bland but with a hint of bitter dirt. I don’t really know how to describe it, but let's just say that the quinoa knocked a couple points off the perfection radar of my dinner.


Lastly, I thought carefully about my drink that accompanied my *dinner. La Croix has become a controversial drink in the foodie world lately. Some people love it and some people absolutely hate it. I am obviously on the side of love. There is nothing better than the refreshing bubbles of a lime La Croix. I thought about some of the claims that people made for and against La Croix.


*Might I say that even though the quinoa gave the dinner a sour taste, my tofu exceeded even my own expectations.


• “La Croix tastes like when your foot falls asleep”
• Okay, this one is understandable. I get the connection between the fizz and the feeling in your foot, but isn’t the feeling in your foot dull when it falls asleep? It feels like a dead weight and I can tell you La Croix is anything but dull.
• “Sparkling water is too extra or fancy”
• Yes, sparkling water costs more in most restaurants. But isn’t this true only in America? When you travel to Europe, one of the first questions the waiters ask you is whether you would like the water straight or sparkling. Is sparkling water truly ‘fancy’ or is this a trend America has yet to catch on to?


In the long run, all of these thoughts that I wrote down during the process of my culinary creation didn’t matter a couple of days later. In the moment though, my meal would have been nothing without the spices I put on the tofu or the amount of salt and pepper I sprinkled on the butternut squash. These “insignificant” ingredients led to my dish tasting exquisite in the end. The “insignificant” quinoa actually led to my disliking the dish more than I wanted to. So if something as “insignificant” as a frozen quinoa-rice blend can affect how I felt about my meal, then what other “insignificant” are making an impact in my life?