Growing up, the only non-fish, non-seafood my family ate was poultry. We only ate it a couple times a month, and except for Thanksgiving it was never cooked in the house. When I was 15, I realized that poultry was just food to me and I didn’t actually enjoy it for itself, and I decided to stop eating it.
I’m not a huge fan of fake meat substitutes, and I don’t specifically seek them out. I’ve never eaten red meat and specialty gave up poultry, so I don’t want to eat something meant to mimic them, for me it defeats the point. As you can imagine, this has led me to seek an enjoyable substitute for a main course on Thanksgiving. After I moved to Texas, the first couple years that I prepared Thanksgiving I made tofu pot pies. I had not grown up eating pot pies, but after trying the commercial version from Amy’s, I really enjoyed it and wanted to make my own. The downside of eating this for Thanksgiving was that it didn’t leave me wanting all the sides that for me are integral part of the meal. Several years ago, I went in search of a recipe for baked tofu. I stumbled across this recipe, and while I really like it, I have needed to tweak it slightly over the years to streamline the recipe and make it more like the baked tofu I envisioned.