Confession: Until the very recent past, I had never cooked with tofu. I had prepared dishes with soy products of other forms—from soy crumbles in taco salads to turning soy beans into milk during an astronaut cuisine class in college (that’s a tale for another time!). But I had left the tofu prep to the restaurant pros until the kind folks at Nasoya approached me with an opportunity to try a few of their products. I took that message as the universe telling me that it was time!

Having seen scrambled tofu on the menu at a few of my favorite brunch restaurants and curious to taste it, I decided that this would be dish number one. I did a few Google searches for a basic idea how to start and hit the kitchen on Sunday morning! Thanks to Gena at Choosing Raw, I knew to prepare on Saturday—stacking my tofu between two plates and weighing the top one down with a few water bottles to squeeze out the excess liquid. But I didn’t prepare quite so well in other ways…my refrigerator was nearly empty so I had to improvise in terms of my mix-ins.

Little did I know that plain tofu is really a blank slate. Unlike beef, chicken or turkey, tofu really doesn’t taste like anything if you just cook it without significant spices or other ingredients. So when I tried just crumbling up the tofu in a pan with some random spices, the results were less than stellar. I could see the potential, but wished I had some bell peppers, onions, garlic and more to add to the party!

In the future, I think I’ll stick with some tested and proven recipes like these:

• This Tofu Scramble posted on SparkPeople is spiced up bell peppers, onion, garlic and curry powder.
• Post Punk Kitchen adds cumin, thyme, tumeric and nutritional yeast.
• And Eating Bird Food combines these two ideas for a sure-to-be flavor-packed mixture.

And will also possibly try these other uses for tofu…

• Tofu Noodle soup from FITNESS is foolproof, basically just pour, stir, heat and eat!
• Chocolate Covered Katie’s high-protein mushroom stroganoff sounds like a tasty blend of tofu, veggies, white wine and spices.
• Who knew you could make carrot cake with tofu? Nasoya, obviously!

Now time for your holiday hook-up! You can have your own kitchen adventure courtesy of Nasoya, as they passed along an extra coupon for a free product! Not a tofu fan? They also offer hummus, noodles and wonton wraps (I hope to try these as ravioli skins soon). Leave a comment below by next Thursday, December 15 at noon EST telling me about your biggest kitchen fail—who am I kidding, this is to make me feel better :) —and you’ll be entered to win a coupon for a free item by Nasoya. You can also enter by tweeting me @karla522. Good luck, everyone!