As you probably know (and certainly would if you clicked on “Say Something” at the top of this page, to send me an e-mail), I sometimes go by the handle (what the hell is this — CB radio?) of “tofuju”. It’s just a hybrid of “tofu” + “Jew”. It’s not Asian.

Or so I thought.

Tonight I did a Google search for “tofuju”. Yeah, I like to search for myself wherever I think the possibility may exist that my name appears in print. I don’t know how many times I’ve looked up my name in the White Pages (the actual book), Switchboard.com, Anywho.com, and anywhere else I might find information on myself. (I just know I’m withholding information from myself, and that the information that I do know is probably inaccurate, i.e. I know that public records indicating my year of birth are not to be trusted.) Well, tonight, I struck gold. My beloved moniker “tofuju” actually appeared in an article in Taiwan Headlines! “Well,” I thought, “I knew I was famous, but I didn’t know my celebrity had reached international proportions.” Alas, you can imagine my disappointment when I discovered that the tofuju referred to in the article bore no relation to the tofuju who was reading it.

As it turns out, “tofuju” means … soybean cheese. Yes, I am an “appetizing item”. And while I always knew I was a “dish”, I never would have dreamed that I would one day be described as “a common side dish for breakfast congee.”

I guess the cheese really doesn’t stand alone, after all.