Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Los Angeles Tofu Festival


Some of the day's offerings.

This photo would have been better, but I had to shoot around someone who just would NOT move...

My kind of event. Lots and lots of tofu and mostly vegetarian. A place where tofu is the star, not a dirty word.

The Los Angeles Tofu Festival kicks off Nisei Week in Little Tokyo (also known as J-Town) downtown Los Angeles. The event is a benefit for the Japanese Service Center. It is about 50 booths selling tofu-based or soy-based food items, plus entertainment and vendors. This year's theme was "Tofuzilla," so of course I had to buy the t-shirt.

Me, Mr. Snackish and food-loving vegetarian friend Martha met to take in the festival. It was a nice warm day, not blistering hot. We even got a little breeze a few times.

We walked around and sampled the food. We didn't have anything amazingly good, but a good time was had by all.


Smoked tofu salad with lemongrass was pretty good.


These folks were having a great time making onigiri sushi.


This guy was eating something that I didn't get to try, but looked great - really fresh tofu with strawberries, strawberry-orange sauce and sliced almonds.


2 creative items - tofu chili in a bread bowl and tofu spam musubi, a Hawaiian treat.


Dessert - red bean paste in a tofu crust.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Excuse me! Someone deleted my post. Even though I'm running an SEO contest, I still genuinely posted that! I am sorry to say that I am not vegeterian now, but I was once, and honestly, when I was, I had never felt better in my whole life.

But can I be honest here and just say that when I'm driving down the street with my car window open and I smell a barbecue with hamburgers cooking, I get very hungry.

My friend from India who works down the street makes me laugh when he refers to meat-eating as a cultural disease! LOL! I said, "A disease?" He said, "Yes, a disease. If you stopped, you would feel much better and your taste for it, which is only a conditioning, would soon disappear."

Maybe I'll try again, I hope he's right. Sorry I didn't post more on the original post, but even though I'm not a vegetarian now, I still have fond memories and definitely love tofu!

Keep up the great writing! (Original enough for cripes sake?!?!)

Sincerely
Sam Freedom
the coolest guy on the planet

Suebob said...

Sorry, Sam. You were in with some advertising comments, which were new on me, and I was so cranky I deleted ALL the comments. No offense meant.

dobbs said...

Sad that the spammers have started spamming blogs :(
I have never eaten tofu as a sweet - with strawberries? - can't begin to imagine how that tastes! However I love tofu in various savoury dishes.

Rachael Narins said...

Ahhhggg. I was SO bummed I missed this festival...I had it on my calendar for weeks, but then at the last minute had to bail out. I am so super glad you went though, and took such pretty pictures and gave such a great report. I cant wait until next year...