Real Men Don’t Eat Tofu

Shhhh, Don’t tell anyone, they Have a Problem with the Word “Curd”

My Marine buddies: “you eat that sh*t?” Not only do I eat tofu but I LIKE it! What You Gonna do about it! Without going into too much detail about how many ways you can prepare it and how versatile it is and how good it is for our health, for some reason when I explain it’s just bean curd, they get that don’t mess with me warrior face.

Back in ancient times (1982) a guy by the name of Bruce Feirstein wrote a book, Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche. Using terms lost to us now in 2022, satire, humor, loving insults, and with tongue planted firmly in cheek, Bruce wrote a funny tome about how the stereotypical man does not do things that are considered effeminate, such as eating quiche. I guess in his mind quiche was a dish to be picked on, one that was thought by many men to be less than masculine.

So What Does This Have to do With Tofu?

I only use tofu for comparison to quiche because of all the bad press they both get. There is nothing unmanly about eating either one if you ask me. I think some hard of hearing folks might have imagined they were hearing a word not associated with food, consumption I mean. To those hearing impaired it may have sounded too much like we were saying, bean ‘turd!’ when trying to explain that bean ‘curd’ is the component of tofu.

I have heard of some foods and experienced some myself as tasting like sh*t, but I wouldn’t put tofu in that category.

I liked quiche growing up but we called it egg pie then. Quiche being much too sophisticated a word for a Missouri boy! Does the word quiche in French mean egg pie? I usually ate it the privacy of my Mom’s kitchen table, on leave from my meat eating ways in the USMC.

Quiche, what’s not to like? That delicious flaky, pie crust baked with any mixture of eggs, cheese, veggies, onion, etc that you could cut in big satisfying wedges and cram in your mouth like a big slice of thick crust pizza. Oh, those were the days before wising up to vegan and ditching the eggs and meat! Now with tofu taking the place of eggs, our vegan quiche is bringing those days back!

Nowadays, in our woke and unforgiving society, even a humorous and obviously satirical book like Bruce’s, (a satire about “Real” men not eating quiche) it could likely result in it being very offensive to somebody, overlooking the satirical tone, labeled sexist without evidence or a fair trial, and further accused by those stiff upper-lipped types as inappropriate for young readers and banned from libraries.