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I have found THE WAY to make crispy firm tofu that I will now do forever more (or until I get bored and wander off to my next food obsession): brining it. It takes no longer than pressing it, is less messy, and the results are unbelievably crispy, even still a little crunchy after overnight refrigeration of the leftovers and then microwaving it, neither process designed to encourage that. And far more successful than any baking or cornstarch-dredging that I've tried before; will never go back. Noting here for my memories:

- Bring 4 cups water with 1/4 cup of salt (or, ratiowise, 1T salt for every 1 cup water needed to cover your tofu) to a boil, then turn off the heat
- Plop your cut-up tofu into the brine - the video did sliced planks, I did cubes so I didn't have two separate cutting steps, it came out fine
- Let it sit for 10-15 minutes
- Pan-fry the tofu in a little oil, flipping around the 3-4 minute mark; repeat until tofu is crispy enough to satisfy you.

As for silken tofu, for quick breakfasts/solo dinners, I've been nuking it with butter and soy sauce and a little bit of chili crisp, then topping it with a scallion that I chopped while waiting for the microwave. Maybe grating a little ginger over if I'm feeling fancy, or now that the lemons are slowly starting to come back, squeezing a little lemon over. It's like a hot hiyayakko, and might be more so if I ever remembered to pick up katsuobushi at Yaoya-San, heh.

*

In the meantime, our neighbors had been texting us while we were away about the annual plumpocalypse, and we came home to a carpet of purple underneath said plum tree, despite the neighbors coming by and picking up the excess while we were gone. Right now, we have enough to fill our entire dutch oven, with dozens hundreds more dropping daily. I really need to set up some kind of net situation to catch them before they hit the ground, I have made refrigerator jam literally every day for the last week and a half, and we are not keeping up. (Right now, our total jam despite our attempts to chip away at it fills my second-largest glass storage pan - 11 cups!)

But because my method so far looks like:

* sweep plums into a pile
* scoop plums of various softness into our largest kitchen bowl
* fill plum bowl with water and let it sit (hyounpark says in case there are worms?!)
* sort plums - only the intact ones make it through
* cook plums until just soft enough to pit
* pit
* weigh the puree, add 40% sugar
* cook, skimming off scum, until it passes the spoon test
* cool
* find a storage container to put the jam in in the fridge
* put on yogurt and toast ad nauseum because I have not committed to buying the whole kit for Proper Jam Making that would let the jam last longer than a few weeks in the fridge

At least our neighbors are equally meh about Proper Jamming so I feel less bad about not doing it, LOL. Still, I did take a cup and a half of yesterday's puree and turned it into a plum version of my favorite roasted applesauce cake for yesterday's block party, and it went smashingly; I was barely able to snag a piece for H and I to split!

Between the cake success and the tofu triumph and lovely August tomatoes marinating in a pool of olive oil and mint and salt and their own juices, I'm proud of these recent food feats. Now to figure out what I'm doing with the pork belly (for dinner tonight). Probably something that can get topped with some of the plum jam, heh.