Homemade Seitan

I decided to try my hand at making Seitan since I can only find it in nuggets and I wanted more cutlets. Could not have been much easier! Here are some pics! Not too many ingredients, athough you will need to go to whole foods or Mother's Market for the Vital Wheat Gluten and the Nutritional Yeast. My only tip is to be sure to keep your vegetable broth on very low while you braise it or it will get too thick and elasticy.

Here's the basic recipe:

In a bowl, combine the following:
1 1/2 cups vital wheat gluten
2 Tablespoons Nutritional Yeast
1 teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning (I used poultry seasoning tho)
3/4 cup cold water
1 Tablespoon Tamari (or low-sodium soy sauce)
3 Tablespoons soy milk
1 Tablespoon Olive Oil

Mix well and knead the dough a few times. Tear dough into 4 sections and roll, pull, squish (whatever) each section into a 1/2 inch cutlet shape. The more you work with it, the easier it stretches and stays.

In a large skillet pour 2 cups of vegetable broth and bring to a simmer. Turn heat to low and add the 4 cutlets to skillet. Cover the pan and cook for 20 minutes, filpping cutlets after 10 minutes. Be sure you do not let the broth boil, only simmer very low.

Now you are ready to use them. Bread and pan cook them like I did and put them in a salad or with some mashed potatoes or even in a sandwich. You can use this product the same as you would chicken. It is delicious and full of protien!!

Yay Chipotle!!

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I'd be recommending a fast food pork burrito establishment but here it is!

If you must eat meat, be responsible! Find out where it came from, how it was raised and what it was fed and injected with! Almost every fast food chain I have researched will not tell you where they get their meat. All they will say is (Chick fil a) "all chickens are processed under USDA inspection and random samples are tested for residues". Hmmm, yeah, same with the beef that gave us ecoli poisoning! That means nothing to me. We live in a country where the beef and chicken ranchers and farms are contributing huge amounts of money to keep the government off their backs. I don't trust 'em!

Here's what I found that was so impressive:
Steve Ells, founder of Chipotle, will tell you where his meat comes from and even has interviews on youtube at the farms to show the conditions. It is not perfect but here is what he says, straight off the website:

"Food With Integrity" isn't a marketing slogan. It's not a product line of natural and organic foods. And it's not a corporate initiative that will ever be finished or set aside to make room for other priorities. It's a philosophy that we can always do better in terms of the food we buy. And when we say better, we mean better in every sense of the word- better tasting, coming from better sources, better for the environment, better for the animals, and better for the farmers who raise the animals and grow the produce.
The hallmarks of Food With Integrity include things like unprocessed, seasonal, family-farmed, sustainable, nutritious, naturally raised, added hormone free, organic, and artisanal. And, since embracing this philosophy, it's had tremendous impact on how we run our restaurants and our business. It's led us to serve more naturally raised meat than any other restaurant in the country, to push for more sustainable practices in produce farming, and to work with dairy suppliers to eliminate the use of added hormones from their operations.
It's even influenced the way we view other aspects of our business, from the materials and systems we use to design and build our restaurants, to our staffing and training programs.
We like the food we serve today. And, because of our Food With Integrity philosophy, we're confident that we'll like it even more down the road.


It may not be a marketing slogan, but it works for me! Next time my kids want fast food, you can bet it will be Chipotle! Nice job, Steve! I hope others will follow suit!

Baked tofu

I always bought my baked tofu already seasoned and baked and it is pricey and you only have like 3 choices of flavors. The recipe to marinate and bake it in my Vegan Yum Yum cookbook looked so easy so I gave it a try.

I will NEVER buy baked tofu again! I had some leftover raspberry chipotle sauce and some mango chipotle sauce that came from Cost Plus Foods so I just sliced up the tofu and poured the sauce over it and let it sit for 5 minutes. Then I lined a sheet with parchment paper and baked the slices for about 35 minutes at 400 degrees until they were brown on the edges.

The PLAN was to put them in grilled sourdough sandwiches with some veggie mayo, lettuce, and tomato. Problem was, they were so good that my friend (who, by the way, had never had tofu before!) and I ate 10 slices and only had 6 left for the sandwiches. It was enough for the two of us but my poor husband had to eat frozen pizza for lunch.

No pics, either, sorry. We downed them too fast!

Cheese

Vegan cheese is a hard sell for me. I like cheese okay; I can enjoy a sandwich without it but a lot of dishes really gotta have cheese. Bean burritos with no cheese are just sad, plus lots of pasta dishes have cheese as a main component. I have had lots of crappy cheeses and need to try a few other ones. I am using a lot of Follow Your Heart cheese right now. The Monterey Jack is awesome for sandwiches and melts great on seitan or tofu dishes or in pasta sauce. The cheddar is yummy in a burrito and both melt really well, although you will need a bit more time to melt than regular cheese so if you are making quesadillas, turn the heat on med low so they can cook a bit longer without burning.

I want to try Sheese cheese, although I hear it does not melt so it is just for snacking on and maybe sandwiches.

Dr. Cow Teese is supposed to be this really yummy nut cheese but I think you can only get it online (so shipping is crazy) or on the east coast. I'll be sure to post once I try these and let you know! In the meantime, gimme your feedback on vegan cheeses you like!

book review

Took the pictureless books back last night and picked up the new book from my favorite food blogger, Vegan Yum Yum. This one has a picture of every single recipe and most have several step by step pics. You'll love it! Recipes are a bit more complicated than other books I have but that's what makes cooking fun, right?? I already made some baked tofu from it to serve on sandwiches today and it'll be a miracle if I can stop snacking on them before lunch comes!

dinner Tuesday night

dinner last night was "chicken" (seitan) parmesean with pasta and a big ol' dark green salad. It was amazing! I am loving cooking with this seitan! It is so easy! I just coated it with flour and breadcrumbs and cooked it in a bit of canola oil while the pasta was cooking. It browned up so nice and crispy and the kids wolfed it down! We plated it up over pasta with marinera sauce and a slice of mozzarella (or veg for me!) cheese on top.

We also tried Mochi, a japanese rice puffy thing. It was fun and tasted good with a drizzle of honey on top. They start out as hard squares like a break apart cookie thingy and they you bake them 10 minutes at 450 and they puff up. They are chewy in the middle and really good!

Book review

Book Review: Vegan with a vengance by Isa Chandra Moskowitz

I wanted to love this recipe book, really, but there are a total of 8 pictures. 8 pictures! for over 150 recipes! Come on!!! Most of the recipes that sounded yummy were pancakes and things that are really not that healthy and it just is not a book I think I'll be using much so, I am sorry to say, this one is going back to Borders.

Book Review: Veganomicon

Read a million great reviews about this one so I bought it without even opening it and I have the same stuff to say about this one...Where are the pictures????? It is really informative and has a section on how to cook a bunch of different veggies so I may keep it but it may go back with the other one. So sad.

dinner Tuesday night

dinner tonight was waffle panini with veggie sausage. It was yummy but awfully rich and messy! I made whole wheat waffles and then we grilled them with cheese (mine was veg cheese, everybody else used smoked gouda or cheddar), veggie sausage, arugala and apricot preserves. Like I said, yummy, but we prolly won't have them often. Too rich!

dinner Sunday night

dinner last night was "chicken" picatta. I made it with seitan, a wheat protien product that tastes and feels just like meat. It was soooo yummy and our dinner guests loved it too!

Recipe report

tried the crispy peanut butter treats with chocolate chips from Alicia's book.

YUMMMM! Kids loved 'em, hubby loved 'em, neighbors loved 'em! I used almond butter instead of peanut butter on the second batch (ya, they were THAT good!) and it was even better. Can I have these for breakfast? They are brown rice and protien so I'm thinkin YES!

TMI

This week I ate a lot of beans. bean burritos, bean soup and beans on salads. Turns out, beans are amazing! This may be waaaay too much info but I spent about 5 seconds on the potty when I had to go. Happy poops make a happy girl! So check give beans a chance. They are yummy, filling and full of protien. Plus, you know...the poop thing.

recipe report

Tried the Moroccan Couscous from Alicia's Kind Diet cookbook.

I couldn't afford the saffron but even without it, this was yummy! Has butternut, carrots, zucchini and scallions with couscous. It was quick to make and still yummy the next day too! I liked it better warm than cold.

Alicia is not so clueless!

Book review:

Alicia Silverstone's Kind Diet

It got such great reviews that I had to check it out. I really thought it would be some lame celebrity soapbox full of stupid stories and crappy recipies; was I ever wrong!

This thing is incredibly well documented and well written with a ton of delicious recipes to boot! Alicia understands our fear to commit and she caters her book for flirting with veganism, becoming vegan and superheros.

She is an animal rights acivist and it shows; her book is full of more reasons to avoid animal products for animals sake instead of just for our health and it is incredibly refreshing. I was a co-founder of our "Mother Earth" club at my high school in the 90's so I am familiar with animal cruelty and the effects of corporate farms on the environment but this was so informative!

I could not recommend this book more highly! It's a fun read that you will learn a ton from and it may just change your life!!