More on Seitan

What can I say? I'm a fan. Tonight I made "ribz". They tasted almost like the Gardenburger Riblets and I have no idea how those compare to the real thing. My guess would be that they aren't even close for a real meat eater. The recipe was the same basic one I've used for fake meat and veggie sausages, but baked with barbeque sauce instead of steamed in foil. The only other small problem I have is that I didn't actually love the barbeque sauce and now I've got most of a bottle left to use.

I've also discovered Trader Joe's Organic Tofu, which is not as firm as I'd like, but it's much cheaper. I can't figure that part out out at all. And for baked tofu (glazed with miso, if you have to know), it's probably better, so it's good all around.

I still haven't made the vegan macaroni and cheese. Mainly because it's not cheese and it requires (according to the recipe) five minutes in the blender. I'm not sure I can handle the noise for that long.

My New Obsession

I'm a bit obsessed with seitan. A few weeks before Thanksgiving, I found a new website: http://vegandad.blogspot.com/. I'm not sure how I found myself there but I'm glad I did. The first thing I noticed was his recipe for vegetarian sausages. I figured the worst thing that could happen if I tried them was that I might be wasting $3 worth of ingredients. Not a horrible cost for a food experiment. At least the recipes don't call for truffles!

So I tried to make them. It was a little too easy and I was pretty sure that I must be doing something wrong. Plus, I didn't have all the spices he called for (fennel and oregano - I know, who doesn't have oregano?!) and I added some Korean hot sauce.

Ronnie and I were both nervous as we tried them - I mean we knew they wouldn't be completely inedible, but whether they would be worth eating was going to be another question. They were not only edible, they were excellent. And lightly cooked in the frying pan for breakfast the next morning, they were even better.

So for Thanksgiving, I tried the stuffed "turkey". It was also excellent! The only thing I would do differently there would be to try the stuffing he recommended or make mine more interesting. I made a pretty boring stuffing and it tasted too much like the "turkey" (but with a different texture).

And today, I watched a video (from a different website) on making seitan corned beef. There are two strange things about that last sentence. First, seitan corned beef?! (Evidently yes.) Second, a video teaching you to make seitan corned beef on the internet? (I am so far behind this whole technology thing!)

I think my next project is going to be the veggie lunch meat from Vegan Dad's site. The one thing I know for sure, I will never buy another package of Tofurkey slices or otherwise.