The Book of Whole Meals Springs Away

Happy Spring! Now that we're officially into the season, it's time for one last peek into Annemarie Colbin's The Book of Whole Meals (1983, but feels like it's from the '70s). Her spring menu is, as per usual, full of dishes that start out as plain, flavorless entrees that get magically transformed into plain, flavorless lunches through the magic of small additions! Take dinner. It's a big bowl of bulgur (or "bulghur")...

Flavored oh, so lavishly, with... salt.

The bulgur gets topped with sukiyaki.

If by "sukiyaki" you mean "some vegetables boiled in water with a little shoyu."

And if this all seems a bit spartan, don't worry! There's soup, too. 

Yes! More boiled vegetables. At least this time, they've got miso.

I know dinner might sound a bit deficient on the protein, but don't worry. It's in the dessert: a Tofu Cream Pie.

As much as I'd like to make fun of the concept, I have to again disclose that one of my favorite desserts is a chocolate tofu pie my mother-in-law makes. (It's mostly butter, chocolate, and sugar, though, with just enough silken tofu to make it soft and creamy enough to slice. Plus, the tofu lets everyone pretend dessert is healthy and not just a mound of butter, chocolate, and sugar.)

Will this Tofu Cream Pie be great? I doubt that tofu plus tahini and maple syrup or barley malt will come anything close to my favorite chocolate tofu pie, but this is probably the most exciting item on the dinner menu.

In the morning, any leftover tofu can be repurposed as a breakfast scramble.

With the health food store favorite, alfalfa sprouts! And one of the only seasonings Annemarie Colbin is aware of: shoyu! (And again, I personally enjoy a good tofu scramble now and then, but there are waaay better ways to season one.)

Wondering how lunch will turn last night's leftovers into a brand new meal? Here's a hint:

What is it? A severely burned taco? A dark chocolate cake thoughtfully presented with a splash of cat barf? Nope. The dome shape and the (I guess?) lettuce edging hints at one of our favorite types of recipes. That's right! It's an aspic!

The leftover sukiyaki gets suspended in agar flavored with a bit more shoyu, plus some ginger or horseradish. This might be slightly more flavorful than dinner! But it will also be cold, gelatinous, and topped with radishes, so there's a definite trade-off. 

And we wouldn't want that leftover bulg(h)ur to feel left out, so it gets mixed with some flour and fried into Bulghur Croquettes.

Flavored with... more salt! Yes, lunch is such a lavish spread that no one will ever realize it's just dinner mixed with agar on one side of the plate and flour on the other. What do you bet that everybody's spooning out the minimal amount of lunch they can take while still being considered polite and hoping that there's still some leftover pie? It doesn't sound like it's perfect... or even necessarily that good... but at least it's not that vegetable aspic.

I'm wholly glad I did not have to try to choke down whole meals from this book, but I loved checking it out.