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My Vegan Family Needs You to Quit Hoarding All the Tofu
Thanks for eating plant-based, but save some for me!
I haven’t had tofu in 3 weeks. No tofu scram; no tofu teriyaki; no sandwiches filled with fried, nutritional-yeast-coated tofu slabs. My local grocery stores have plenty of toilet paper, but there’s not a tub of tofu in sight.
Aside from people dying, and the possible long-term effects of social isolation on our children, I would say lack of tofu is my #3 problem. Okay, that’s not true; my list of worries is epic right now. But at a time when there’s so little we can control, my little vegan family wants the comforts of tofu: its chewy texture, its reliable nourishment, and above all just the normality it represents to us.
Every morning, I witness my husband’s stress level climb one more notch as he opens the fridge to the sleepy realization that, no, he still can’t cook his usual scramble breakfast. And every day my 5-year-old daughter asks when we’re going to get more, and I have to tell her again that there’s no way of knowing. In some ways, it’s a small thing. But it’s also a daily reminder of how fast the world is changing and how little control we have over anything.
Like so many people around the world, we’re under a Stay at Home order. Even before the statewide lockdown began, my daughter and I were sick, so we self-quarantined. As a result, my family’s only gotten groceries three times this month, and each time, the tofu shelves have been completely cleaned out.
I live in a small farming town two hours from Seattle. I don’t know any other vegans in my town, so I doubt vegans are the ones hoarding the tofu here. Besides the missing tofu, the plant-based refrigerated protein shelf is well-stocked, like the one in the “EVERYBODY PANICKED…EXCEPT THE VEGANS” meme. All the fake meat is still there, just not the tofu: no firm, no extra-firm, not even silken.
