Mayonnaise??

With the summer season now upon us, and being this is the first year my husband is going to be home - and healthy - for it, I'm guessing he won't want to eat seitan sandwiches or have soup every day, so decided to look into some McDougall sandwich spreads and salads.

The main part of most of those recipes is the mayonnaise, so I took a look at all of the mayo recipes throughout the years to be associated with the McDougall program, from the earliest mention in a newsletter with a recipe by McDougall cooking instructor Alex Bury in a July 2005 newsletter, to the latest incarnation in the Kid Friendly Snack, Dips and Spreads article with recipes by Heather McDougall in February 2013, which is the same one posted by Mary McDougall back in a 2005 newsletter, which is the same one in the McDougall Made Easy DVD. In fact, Weight Watcher's mayonnaise was even mentioned in one cookbook as a good alternative because, at least at the time, it was egg and oil-free. IDK if this product even exists anymore. I know another alternative, fat-free Nayonnaise, no longer is.

The McDougall recipe is the one I made up. I figured it's been around McDougall circles the longest so it stood the test of time. It must be good, right?

Tofu Mayonnaise

1  12.3 ounce package firm lite silken tofu
1 ½ tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon dry mustard
1/8 teaspoon white pepper

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and process until smooth.  Cover and refrigerate.

This will keep in the refrigerator for at least 1 week.

The instructions I used said to drain the tofu in a fine sieve first, so I put the package of MoriNu tofu into one of those reusable coffee filters. I never used it for coffee but for straining non-dairy milk. It's really fine. After about 2 hours I got over an ounce of liquid out of it and decided that was enough.

Now to blend everything up in my food processor. It didn't take long to break down and become smooth, I put it all into a pint Mason jar, but before putting it into the refrigerator handed the jar and a spoon to my husband and told him to taste it and tell me what he thinks it is. His guess was unsalted creamy cottage cheese. I said it was supposed to be mayonnaise and he said he would never had guessed that in a million years. I asked his opinion because, as I've said a few times lately, with this cold my taste buds are a bit off, and he's had mayo more recently than I have. It's over a decade since I last had some but only a year or so for him, just a few months before his CABG surgery. I hoped it would acquire some taste overnight in the refrigerator.

It didn't. Hubby suggested adding sugar and paprika so it would taste more like Miracle Whip, a product he always liked more than plain mayo. When asked if he would be the guinea pig and tell me when it got close, he rescinded the suggestion. In fact, he said he no longer wanted me to try make any kind of sandwich salad or spread, that he's lived this long without any tuna or egg salad, real or fake, that he'll be just as happy for the rest of his life continuing to do without them.

I mixed some with ketchup and used it as a spread on a whole wheat roll when I made an onion, lettuce and tomato sandwich. Like that it wasn't bad at all. Maybe tomorrow I'll mix up some more of this concoction and add a little vinegar and water and shake it all up and use it on a bowl of rice and veggies at lunch time.

But I know I won't be wasting any more tofu or garbanzos trying to make a sandwich spread out of it. My husband's mind is made up and tightly closed to the idea. I guess it's back to seitan sandwiches, soup, and the occasional container of leftovers until I can find something else to make. There are loads of non-sandwich spread related salads out there for the trying. Temps already hit 90 degrees here in NJ so it's going to be a long, hot summer, and I really would rather not light the oven every 2 weeks for 90 minutes at a time to make more seitan for him!