There are few things I like better than a turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce, a pickle, and - to really max the carb load - a dollop of stuffing. And since this is the last day when you should safely be eating leftover turkey, I hope you enjoy every scrumptious bite.
I don't think I'd feel quite the same if my sandwich was going to be made with leftover Tofurky, which is plant-based faux turkey.
Not that I've got anything against vegetarians. I could easily be vegetarian, or vegetarian adjacent at least. And I don't have much against vegans, either, even though they tend to be pills about food items like milk, eggs, and honey. But vegan food can be quite tasty. (I have a niece who's a pescatarian, but who does some vegan cooking and baking, and does a great job.)
But if there's one vege-vegan-y food that I've never been drawn to, it's tofu.
I've always found it bland and slimy. If I need to find meatless protein, give me a tablespoon of peanut butter over a cube of tofu any old day.
Decades ago - when vegetarians were considered weird, and no one had even heard of vegans - my brother Tom went through a tofu phase, prompting a family wag (can't remember which one: we all have plenty of wag in us; it may even have been Tom himself) to coin the phrase "there's no fu like a tofu."
Anyway, the Thanksgiving-ish part of this is that I've never wanted any part of Tofurky. I'm all about the real deal.
Nonetheless, I was delighted last week to read an article about a Washington Post tour of the Tofurky plant, which is in Hood River (Oregon, as exactly no one will be surprised to read).
Tofurky was first produced (discovered? invented?) over twenty-five years ago and since then has brought millions of "holiday roasts" to market.
These days, when there are so many vegetarian and vegan alternatives, and no one rolls their eyes when someone announces they're a veg, Tofurky has become something of:
...a nostalgia food, hearkening for vegetarians and vegans an era when holiday main dishes were often expected to be meat-based. The roast is their rebuttal to Norman Rockwell’s iconic Thanksgiving turkey, with its own cachet and fame.
Tofurky was the trailblazer, setting the standard for a plant-based offering that still captured the festivity of the holiday season. These roasts, with their bouncy exterior and squidgy wild rice stuffing, some accompanied by a packet of gravy and even a vegan brownie for dessert, haven’t changed much over time, and that’s just the way devotees want it. Like the green bean casserole with canned mushroom soup — could you make it more “gourmet” and contemporary? Yes, but holiday diners want it just the way they remember it.
I'm all for holiday food nostalgia. For me, the can't do without nostalgic item is pineapple-raisin sauce at Easter. And I can't say I wasn't happy when my sister Trish made my mother's traditional creamy fruit, nut, and marshmallow "salad" for Christmas Eve a few years back. It was every bit as tasty as I remembered, but, alas, sweet enough to hurl anyone into a diabetic coma. So if that only gets repeated every decade or so, that's fine. (If Trish wants to go Christmas Eve nostalgia again, I'd prefer the kidney bean and meatball casserole, thanks.)
But I do get nostalgic food associations with the holidays. Just that mine wouldn't be for Tofurky. Which may be too bad, because it doesn't sound all that terrible:
The finished roast is not jiggly and bland like tofu. It’s savory, with good chew and something Thanksgiving-ish and autumnal imparted by the stuffing.
An interesting aspect of Tofurky is that, unlike many of the recent meat substitutes, it make no attempt to pass for real meat. Yes, at one point, it did come shrouded in fake "turkey skin", but that feature was tossed.
The company has sold 7.5 million holiday roasts, and not because anyone has ever confused them with a burnished-skin, 30-pound Butterball.
Anyway, in early November, the plant switches its operations to focus for a few days on producing nothing but the roasts before returning to its regular production of meat substitutes, like tofu cold cuts.
An interesting aspect of Tofurkey production, which combines the tofu-based masa (dough) with what sounds like a tasty wild rice stuffing (wonder if they use Bell's Seasoning in that stuffing), is that:
The whole process owes something to the Fig Newton. More than a century ago, James Henry Mitchell invented the apparatus that made the “oo-ee, gooey, rich and chewy” cookie a smash hit. It was a funnel within a funnel that allowed two separate mixtures to be pressed out around each other at the same time.
Another fun bit:
Employees cheer as finished Tofurky is packaged and prepared for shipment.
It's difficult for me to imagine that the folks working in a Butterball factory cheer when the creepy pop-up eye thermometer is stabbed into the turkey and the pasty, fleshy bird is shrink-wrapped.
Still, although I may someday try Tofurky out, I'd still rather have a good-old fashioned turkey turkey sandwich, even if that turkey was a Butterball.
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