Med. Breakfast: Hummus, Tabouli, Pita Chips

An unusual breakfast, sure. It is still delicious, any time of day. Pita Chips served with hummus and tabouli for dipping. Hummus is Sabra Brand with Pine Nuts. I like Sabra in any place I cannot find Holy Land.

I ate my breakfast with a mini-V8 (low sodium) and water.

Chik'n Style Seitan with Pasta

I thought about the seitan strips from yesterday all day and how I could improve or experiment with the flavors and seasonings. So I did.

Recipe:

dry ingredients
1c vital wheat gluten
3T nutritional yeast flakes
about .5-1t Old Bay Seasoning
a dash of Montreal steak seasoning

wet ingredients
.13c soy sauce/shoyu
.5c veg stock
.25c water
1T olive oil

Again, heat up oven to 375 degrees F. Mix dry ingredients and wet separately, then combine. Mix well until ball forms, then knead. I rolled into a cylindrical log, and sliced up as thin as I could. Lay onto lightly oiled cookie sheet and bake for 5-8 mins on one side, flip and then other side. I was getting impatient, so I wound up pan frying after baking to crisp up some of the pieces.

I served on penne pasta with organic strained tomatoes as my sauce, seasoned with salt and pepper.

Seitan Strips with 3 Sauces

I really wanted to make some sort of seitan since I had most of the ingredients. I was out of chickpeas, so no chickpea cutlets and in fact did not have any premade beans and didn't feel like making a batch of dry beans. I also did not want to wait over an hour for a giant seitan loaf/log.

What to do?

VegWeb to the rescue! I found THIS Recipe after a quick search for "easy seitan".

I modified it ever so slightly by grating in some garlic and adding a teaspoon of lemon juice. I sliced the glutenous log into strips and baked as directed, but a tad longer to get more crispy. Served with 3 sauces: "zesty" steak sauce (aka generic Heinz 57); generic A1; Ken Davis BBQ Sauce; and a soy sauce I made with grated garlic and some hot sauce stirred together.

Verdict: WOW. Easy, chewy, and pretty healthy. I've often fried up and eaten plain chik'n or steak-style strips. This is a fantastic alternative and I know what all the ingredients are. The add-ins could be endless for experimentation: add some tofu? some hot sauces, ginger, lime juice? Savory Italian style? BBQ for the grill?

Plus, given that I completely botched some brownies earlier today, this experiment turned out fantastic. I also made focaccia bread sometime between yesterday and today which turned out great, a little too dense, but still delicious. Just in case anyone thought I had given up on baking.