CONFESSION: I love cookbooks. Like LOVE cookbooks, even though I rarely use the recipes as described. I like browsing through for fun, getting ideas, learning new techniques I can apply elsewhere. Sure, I use the internet to find recipes on occasion, but my first stop is almost always my shelf of cookbooks. And that’s where [...]

Who knew a crappy little hole-in-the-wall restaurant would have one of the best meals out I’ve had in a long time? My friends and I had dinner at Taste of Lebanon in Chicago before seeing our friend Don play Tom Cruise in a reenactment of Legend at the Neo-Futurists Theatre and were treated to a [...]

CONFESSION: I am hugely skeptical about tofu that claims to be something else. Unless it’s made by Quorn. Then it’s cool.
That said, it’s not a surprise I’m not terribly impressed with Smart Strips Chick’n Strips. They simply tried to make them too much like chicken, which is awesome in its own way, I guess, but [...]

CONFESSION: I hate prepping tofu. I’m a huge tofu fan but extremely picky about density and texture. That’s why, whenever we visit Mitsuwa, our favorite Asian grocer, we load up on their fried tofu. Mitsuwa has large slabs of already fried extra firm tofu with vegetables embedded in it that take all the work out [...]