I've been wanting to make seitan (a meat alternative made from wheat gluten) for ages. Yesterday I decided I should make my favorite Tikka Masala recipe (from Jamie Oliver's book Jamie's dinners), veganize it and add homemade seitan chicken. So that's what I did today. It all tasted awesome, but seeing as how the seitan took almost an hour and a half and the Tikka Masala took almost an hour I realized that it might have been a good idea to make the chicken a different night. My boyfriend had the same as me, except with real chicken (yuck) instead of the seitan chicken. Of course it is an improvement because he had the veganized sauce but I still would have preferred that he had the seitan too.


Here is the seitan cooking. The gluten itself has no flavor, so to make it more like chicken it is cooking in the chicken flavoring from LDV. I was a little worried, because the Tikka Masala recipe calls for the chicken to be marinated for half an hour in an Indian yogurt sauce and I wasn't sure how the flavors would go together, but it ended up being really good. I was impressed. The recipe made more seitan than I thought though so I only used half of it in the Tikka Masala. The next time I make it I'm going to double or triple the recipe as it keeps for up to 6 months in the freezer. I love convenience foods.


Here's the "chicken" marinating.


The only thing I don't like about Indian food is that it always looks so boring. This dish was absolutely wonderful, but you wouldn't know it from looking at the boring brown stuff over rice... As for veganizing the recipe for the sauce that was very easy. I simply substituted soy cream for the yogurt and the cream in the recipe. I would have used soy yogurt, but the only kind we could find had strawberry flavor. I swear, I just saw the regular kind.

On a different note 'Becoming Vegan' and 'Vive Le Vegan' arrived today. I was excited (as always) my boyfriend however asked me if I didn't have enough books about veganism already. The answer is, of course, NO! Silly boys. Will probably be cooking some more tomorrow as it is Sunday and I'm off work, so I'll try to take more pics.

I was checking my e-mail today and found an e-mail about a comment that had been posted on this blog. It was from Sarah :) Yay! It said she loves me too (because I love her for making me a vegan kitchen goddess). I was so excited. Then I realized that I had checked a moderate comments setting, so then I tried to publish the comment but it wouldn't work... But I have the e-mail. Sorry Sarah.


I realized that I'm not very good at posting pictures. It really is too bad, because I make a lot of good food. I took a picture of my dinner today, pasta with spinach, mushrooms, lemon, garlic and soy milk. Oh, and pine nuts on top. It was really good.


This past weekend and through this week I've made tofu scramble which I adapted from the post punk kitchen. It was really good, and it looked like scrambled eggs. My boyfriend saw me cooking something, so he decided to have some too. He liked it. I made some fried potatoes for breakfast, seeing as how we had been out on Friday night. That was nice. I had refried beans with mine.

I made Daniyell's peanut butter cookies and Wollfie's peanut butter cookies, both from LDV (La dolce Vegan). I added chocolate chip cookies to both. I loved them and my boyfriend has started calling me the cookie monster. We had a friend over for dinner on Friday. I was going to make the stuffed eggplant from GOV, because they are awesome, but all the eggplants at the store were looking sad, so I ended up making mashed potatoes, dijon brusselsprouts, spinach and mighty miso gravy. The boys, being omnivores, also had chicken. I intended to make some tofu for myself to go with the veggies, but time ran out so I ended up having everything but the chicken. I asked my friend how everything was and he said awesome. Then I told him there was soy milk in the mashed potatoes and he had to taste it again. He still liked them :) Then he told me how I was the opposite of this guy he know because I eat only veggies and his friend won't touch them. Stupid boys. Veggies are awesome.

Yesterday for dinner I had potato wedges that had been baked in the oven with garlic, terragon, lemon and olive oil and asparagus on the side with chopped cherry tomatoes that had been marinated in garlic, terragon, olive oil and red wine vinegar. I did kind of miss the hollandaise with my asparagus until I started thinking about how disgusting the eggy smell is and how it gets on everything, yuck. Then I was over it. I also made soy dogs for dinner one day. That is to say I bought soy dogs, boiled them, bought buns and made french fries.... It was good though. I came across the long wiener type ones as opposed to the fat bratwurst kind so I bought them.

I'll try to be better about taking pictures. I just got an e-mail from amazon and 'Vive Le Vegan' is on it's way. I'm excited. I love cooking.

I'm bad with breakfast. I don't like eating early in the mornings, so I usually go to school on an empty stomach. Because I'm disorganized and always running late I often forget to bring lunch too, and therefore end up starving and having to buy a vegan chocolate or something at school. Therefore I decided that I was going to make a rice & bean salad from 'How it all Vegan' by Sarah Kramer and Tanya Barnard.


As you can see the salad looks awesome. It also tasted great. I ended up eating it for dinner and none of it ever made it to school.... I'll have to make some more.

I also feel very proud for having taken a picture of something I made. I just want to emphasize that this bowl is my second one, because the first was gone before I remembered that I was supposed to take a picture.





My cat, Rex. He has devil eyes in this picture, but it looked even worse after I tried putting it through photoshop... oh well. He doesn't really have anything to do with this post. He's just a cutie. He liked the corn in my rice salad, and he can never pass on avocado... cats.

A very productive weekend. I've been cooking up a storm, and all of it from Sarah Kramer's books. On Friday I made Roasted cherry tomato pasta which was heavenly. On Saturday I made two loaves of Zucchini bread, then yesterday I made mashed potatoes, baked portobello mushrooms and dijon brusselsprouts and peanut butter cookies with choc chips for dessert. Who knew vegan food could be this decadent...? Well I did. And Sarah did because she wrote the book on it. And anyone who has made anything from her books knows.

I didn't take any pics, so I will have to cook some more tomorrow... however there is a pic of the roasted cherry tomato pasta here:sudzgirl's blog and if that doesn't make you hungry nothing will. If you wanna check out Sarah's website it's here. I love Sarah. She makes me a vegan kitchen goddess.

Other than making food I'm "studying" for a test tomorrow. I hate midterms with a passion. Stupid midterms. They aren't made better by the fact that it's anywhere from -5 to -15 degrees outside (celcius) and there's tons of snow and one of my friends is studying on Malta and another friend is moving to southern Spain. Stupid friends.