i love you. i could (quite possibly) be your biggest fan. i am completely comfortable spending just a bit of my cash money to get your vegan mac and cheese, your dilled salmon salad or your vegan chik nuggets. i love this. i like seeing what will be on your new expanded hot bar. suffice it to say that for the umpteen years i have resided in the ric, you have been sooo good to me: the two bespectacled men behind your deli counter are lovely to look at and are adept at answering questions, the dredded manager always nice and positive, the sweet gentleman at the register (i wish i could remember his name) always reminds me to use my morning mojo card. these are just some of the things that keep me returning to your organic deliciousness.

this weekend, however, could be a turning point. i frequent ellwoods probably 6-7 times a week: to pick up an apple for a snack, coffee in the morning, cheese, soup, refill water, ad nauseum. i notice things. like saturday afternoon- the lines for people to check out- um, there were only two and huge amounts of ET employees just milling about. saturday evening - the salad bar (just the salad bar) looked as if it had been hit by a small tornado and the lettuces were wilty and some leaves inedible. late sunday afternoon, we stopped in for some water after our lengthy walk and to check out the options for dinner. oh my, it couldn’t have been more than 5:15pm. the hot bar was obliterated: two containers of mashed cauliflower with nothing in the them, seitan completely low, the cream of asparagus soup had reached the bottom and was simmering into a darker lumpier green, the buffalo wings and other chicken drummettes were reaching sparse and the brisket, well, there was none. these are just the things i can remember – i didn’t have a pen to write anything down and ellwoods is always so pristine. later that same night because i love ellwoods, i was back to buy a cypress grove truffle and a local lorton cheese (both pair nicely with wine)and i got stuck in the longest line ever to check out. (because there was only one checkout line – there had to be at least 9 people waiting in the same line with me and more milling employees.) i looked for bread but other than montana bread, there was nothing by way of “dinner bread”. piet or sketchy, i was wishing for one of you two about then.

i hoping this is not what is to come. i don’t want to drive to the west for my organic needs, because i adore ellwoods. this was a bad weekend, i just know it was.

I found a recipe for Thai Green Curry with chicken in some gourmet cooking magazine, and I thought how yummy would it be with some Thai marinated tofu? Answer? Extremely yummy.

We bought two cans of coconut milk probably close to a year ago, and I can’t even remember why we bought it..but anyway, this was our first time cooking with it and I can’t believe how creamy and delicious it is. We also bought some Thai green curry paste for this recipe, and I love it because it’s hot but its not “Omg my mouth is on fire” hot. It has so much flavor and it just gives the dish some wonderful heat.

I know I wanted to use tofu for this recipe but I didn’t just want to throw some big old cubes into it without having first marinating it. So I woke up yesterday morning and was on a mission to create a Thai marinade. I ended up using lime juice, brown sugar, vegetable oil, garlic, red pepper flakes, ginger, basil, and coriander. We’ve had these coriander seeds sitting in our spice rack and I’ve never known what to do with them. To be honest I didn’t even know what it would taste like. So I crushed one of the seeds with my fingers yesterday to see what it would smell like and it smelled lemony and delicious. I thought it would go really well in the marinade since I wanted to use lemongrass but I didn’t want to drive all the way up to our Asian food superstore. So I crushed some of those up into the marinade and it was pretty amazing. Then Josh had requested that we cut the tofu into triangles instead of the usual cubes, and I think I like it better that way now too. It’s just a way to mix it up a bit with some tofu.

We have this great natural food store called Ellwood Thompson right down the street from us that has the best tofu, and luckily for my sister Allyson and her boyfriend William it’s sold in bulk so they can stock up on pounds and pounds of tofu everytime they come to visit. But what’s so great about the tofu is first of all it’s made locally, and it’s the best extra firm tofu we’ve ever had. It really is extra firm. It’s perfect for making tofu cutlets or tofu triangles like we used in this recipe. So if you live in the Richmond, Virginia area go to Ellwood Thompson to get your tofu.

So back to the curry. I marinated the tofu in the thai marinade for probably 4 hours. We ended up serving the curry over udon noodles because those are my favorite kind of noodles and I don’t particularly like rice with things like curry. Moral of the story? Thai food is amazing and it’s opened up a whole big flavorful door for cooking in our little kitchen. The end.

PS: Our cat Sara posed for yet another ridiculously cute picture (We swear we didn’t put her in the pot!)