Wednesday was my birthday, and I maintained my tradition of baking a personal comfort-food dish for myself, even if my family doesn’t particularly care for it.

It’s a vegetarian variation on s kidney pie. My mother (who’s still alive; I put this in the past tense because she doesn’t cook anymore) would make it fairly often, skimping on the ingredients so that it wasn’t really a STEAK-and-kidney pie, mostly kidneys and mushroom soup.

I do it differently every birthday, and not at all during the rest of the year. Here’s how I did it Wednesday:

Prefer a piecrust (I had a sourdough bread rising Wednesday, so just used that dough; bread dough’s excellent for meat-pie crusts).

Saute a large chopped onion and one minced clove of garlic. Add an 8 oz. container of mushrooms (sliced, if you prefer.) Then add half a block of tofu, diced, a handful of frozen peas and corn. Finally, stir in a can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, undiluted. Season with salt, pepper and paprika.

Put the mushroom/tofu/vegetable glop in the prepared pie plate. Add a top crust. Carve something symbolic in the crust. (I did “51” this year.) Bake at 375 degrees for not very long—a half hour should do it.

Eat nostalgically.