Monday, October 6, 2008

Great Gluten or VeganMoFo Day 5

This post is definitely gluten-full, sorry in advance to those of you who are gluten-free. Sunday we relaxed, enjoyed the weather, Rob played soccer, and made seitan. Rob made two SO'G logs for me to use during the week. Our neighbor's have a pear tree and I still had a bunch of pears left after we ate quite a few. I asked my local natural parenting group what I should do with the pears and there were several recipes I need to try, but I went with pear apple sauce. I figured pear apple sauce was quick and easy and Parker was more than willing to do the peeling and cutting. We just cut up a bunch of pears and a couple apples into the slow cooker, added some date sugar and cinnamon, set it to low for a few hours and voila. It made the house smell great! Thanks Jodi! Lunch today was seitan sandwiches on whole wheat buns with Vegenaise (I need to start making my own!), spinach leaves, and avocado with pear apple sauce. Why use date sugar (nutritional analysis for chopped dates here)? Well, first of all it isn't really a "sugar" in the traditional sense, it is just dates ground up very fine. It is my granulated sweetener of choice. I am not saying it is a "health food", but it does have some Protein, Calcium, Iron, Potassium, Manganese, etc. and fiber. It also tastes great and gives everything you make a nice dark color.
For dinner, I realized I had all the ingredients (thanks again to our friends who gave us a bunch of produce before they left, I had some green beans to use up) for Veganomicon's Seitan Piccata with Olives and Green Beans. We have a hit on our hands. Right away Parker said, "This has all my favorite foods in it!". It is no secret that we are a family of kalamata olive lovers. I served it over mashed nooch potatoes and it is all gone. Rob was wondering if we could also serve it over rice (I think potatoes was better, but I might try quinoa sometime or maybe pasta). I did change the recipe a bit: I added nooch (nutritional yeast) to the flour for the breaded of the seitan because I just can't help myself...it is a sickness, I used up half of a yellow onion because it needed to be used and I only had one shallot, I used red wine instead of white (that is what was open in the refrigerator), I used a little less seitan (since Rob is my seitan maker, I feel the need to use it sparingly, but he promises to make more if I use it all so I'll won't be so stingy next time or maybe I'll get off my lazy butt and make seitan myself) and more green beans, I cut up the green beans in smaller pieces to be more kid-friendly, I subbed 1 cup of cooking water from the potatoes for 1 of the cups of vegetable broth (in most recipes, it is fine to sub water for veg broth - it can save you sodium and money), and I didn't have any fresh parsley so I omitted it. The piccata was delish!

3 comments:

Loretta said...

Yesterday must have been a good day for seitan--I made seitan-portobella stroganoff for dinner last night (with seitan I made from scratch for the first time, and it was totally easy and good). Yum! We really like seitan piccata, too. I'm going to have to try adding nooch to the breading next time, though. :) I'm so glad you're posting lots of yummy recipes this month--I'm looking forward to seeing what you make next!

River (Wing-It Vegan) said...

It would be so nice to have a pear tree! Or at least a nice neighbor with a pear tree!
The pear apple sauce sounds so good! Those sandwiches look so glutenlicious! :)

VeganLinda said...

Loretta, Stroganoff sounds good. I haven't made that in a while. I know making seitan is easy, but I prefer to have Rob do it. Silly, I know, but he has the baked seitan down to a science. I would like to boil some soon though...a different texture for different dishes.

River, It is really nice having a neighbor with berries, pears, and all sorts of other yummy stuff in their yard (not to mention a swimming pool which they also share). Next year we hope to turn most of our yard into edible trees, bushes, and plants. Our garden was beyond lame this year, but such is life with a baby. :-)