Red Cooking Tofu

It's been a couple of bad days. We've been on the road for weeks now, as you probably know--and came home to 1) a dead stove (no way to turn the oven on), 2) a broken dishwasher (a nice leak all over the kitchen floor, staining it for a week), and 3) a phone company snafu of epic proportions. They shut off our phone! Their error, a keying error, trying to shut off another phone. But it means they also shut off our internet. The phone's back on now after much screaming but they're telling us it'll be a week before they can turn the DSL back on. Somehow, they were able to shut it off in 24 hours but can't turn it on for over a week.

Which means I have a ton of work and no way to do it--except driving an hour (I live really, really rurally) to a Starbucks, where I'm sitting right now, online, trying to get all my work done in the thrumming drone of a zillion conversations.

Sigh.

Times like these, I need comfort food. Much comfort food.

Which for me often means tofu. I love it! I know: me, a carnivore of ravenous proportions. But there's something so delicious, soft, and comforting about tofu, particularly in a deep braise. Here's a real secret: often, I'd rather have it than mac-and-cheese.

Do you have any secrets like that? Comfort foods that most people think aren't? I'd love to hear about them.

But for now, on to the tofu, done in the classic Chinese braise.

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