Get a packet of tofu. It'll cost you anywhere from $1 to $5 depending on what kind you get and where you get it from. I'd recommend Firm Tofu, but you can get anything from Medium Firm to Extra Firm or Pressed.
Take it out the packet - There will be water in it, so be careful.
For anything other than Extra Firm or Pressed, you should pat dry the tofu with some paper towels. Then place something heavy on it for a few minutes to get out all the extra water. You can skip this step if you want, doesn't really matter that much.
Meanwhile, heat up a pan and, once its hot, put some oil on it.
Crumble your tofu into little pieces and put it on the pan.
It'll start sizzling and becoming golden brown. You don't have to wait for it to become completely brown or anything. Just cook it for a few minutes.
Now put whatever spices you want/have. I use a minimum of black pepper, turmeric, and salt. But seriously, use whatever you want. For salt, I prefer Kala Namak or Indian Black Salt (it's pink in color). I also put in some nutritional yeast near the end.
Just keep tossing and turning it for a few minutes. Say, five minutes. You can add some spinach or other veggies if you want. Then take it off the pan and enjoy.
You can eat this straight up (if you want) or have it with some ketchup or sriracha. Or on a toast with some avocado.
Seriously. The entire thing takes like 10-15 minutes (if that) and is super cheap and healthy. You get all the protein you need in one meal and you can add some veggies to make it even healthier. One packet of tofu can be anywhere from one meal to three meals depending on how big you are and how much you eat, btw.
You can look up Tofu Scramble online to find a million different ways of making it with different spices and veggies and cooking techniques etc. There are so many variations that you can have this as a meal everyday and never have the same dish twice.
Tofu is great, another good way is to just slice it thin (like a quarter inch thick about), marinade it with your favorite sauce/seasonings and then bake it in the oven.
There are so many easy, cheap ways to use tofu. It's really versatile. I wish more people used it and didn't think of it as "that weird Asian food that I never ate when I was a kid so I'm not gonna try it now". It's cheap. It's easy. It's healthy! What more can you want???
also its so easy to adapt so many recipes like stir fries and things that normally have small bits of animal, just use some chunks of fried tofu instead and ta-da!
:soypoint-1: :tofu-cool: :soypoint-2: me and the soyboys soyfacing about soy
I think it's that most people fundamentally do not know how to prepare food because they were raised by boomers who could only ineptly follow mediocre recipes to the letter or who relied on just resting on the inherent flavor of something instead of shaping it by cooking and never learned to cook themselves because fast food is always available. Like for me growing up everything was pretty much just "throw meat in pan until cooked, eat with plain noodles boiled too long in unsalted water" and shit like that, so I had to learn to cook as an adult through trial and error when trying to turn the random ingredients and scraps I had on hand into something palatable.
I picked up a block of tofu for the first time a few months ago and could prepare it properly without any guidance (ok, I did look up how to press it because I remembered that was a thing you have to do, but I didn't bother with any recipe beyond just checking that yeah it's as simple as adding spices and frying or baking it), because I actually learned how to cook using whatever's on hand. Most Americans would just plop the wobbling cube of it into a pan with some salt and throw a tantrum because it turned out even worse than the steaks they fuck up the same way, because it's a blank slate that has to be shaped into what you want instead of being something that's sort of ok on its own if just tossed in a pan until cooked.
It's the same with beans, people just think of them as the slimy, unseasoned things their parents made them eat next to an unseasoned chunk of rubbery ham and some rice that was burned to the bottom of the pot, because nobody knows how to actually cook.
I'm so sorry.
This hurts my soul.
I'm glad you're better now. :avoheart:
I will say that bit applies more to my mother's experience than my own. To this day she insists she hates beans because she was traumatized by my grandparents' cooking, even as I point out like half a dozen mostly-bean dishes that she loved.