ma po dairy though Jenny!! Sorry... couldn't quite hold back the strange image of reverse replacement between dairy and soy.

I would say most people I know here probably have beancurd at least once a week, at least as long as they eat out at a Chinese restaurant. Probably twice. People who like soya milk for breakfast or the beancurd dessert probably get a bit more. I can't stand soya milk (don't like rice milk either - so many of these mock-up milks are so sweet, including the low lactose, low fat (UHT combined) and high calcium - ick!) so I probably get beancurd a bt less, but I do like it, and have surprised myself and my parents by finding that I like it in quite a variety of different ways. When I cook it myself (often with rice porridge) I get the one with egg inside which has a nice texture and then I often put it with a strong sauce. Nothing gives flavour to beancurd like black bean sauce with garlic!

Not sure I agree with the suggestion that it's used as a condiment here. What rubbish. No it's not a replacement either. If you were ordering for a group of a half dozen people you'd probably have one chicken dish, one veg, one soup, one beancurd, one fish, one prawn and one pork or maybe an egg dish somewhere in there. It's the main part of one dish very often. It's not some kind of fancy vegetarian replacement protein, although being as Buddhists are vegetarian there's a number of mock meat dishes floating around which are largely made up of various soy products.

The comment about food not being what kills me is because my food doesn't affect my kidneys and they're currently the top contender for fatality in this particular body. Having learned the hard way with Crohn's I know all about being miserable from what I eat, but it's very often the healthy stuff which makes me miserable - I made a vow yesterday to never eat another mushroom, and I may even stick to it... if I don't smell any garlic butter for the rest of my life!

I think I'm drifting away from the nutritional/scientific side of all this, so I'll stop now!

Kerri.