I'm BAAACCCKK!

Hey all you vegan freakies and other well-wishers: I am back with a vengeance! With yummy goodness to share!

So I had a friend in town not too long ago who requested that I experiment on her. So, in honor of having someone around to appreciate my efforts, I busted out the Braised Seitan with Brussels, Kale and Sun-Dried Tomatoes (p. 182) and served it with the oh-so-tasty Broccoli Polenta (p. 114).

This was my first attempt at making homemade seitan and I think it came out pretty well. I used the Simple Seitan recipe in the book (p. 131). I don't think I'm a big nutritional yeast fan, so in the future I might leave that out, but who knows. I'll experiment. I really don't eat a lot of tempeh or seitan, as I love legumes of every shape and form and could live on lima beans if I had too, but it was fun to try something new.

I do however looove polenta, and I love broccoli, and the Broccoli Polenta was so easy and so tasty that you must make this right away. I basically ate the leftovers like muffins or cupcakes or something. Mmmmm.

Once the seitan was ready, the recipe itself was simple and fast to prepare. The sauce is very basic, just a little red wine, veggie broth, and a few spices.

This dish seemed to get more interesting as we ate it. At first, both my friend and were like, hmmm, it's ok, not that much to it. But the more we ate, the more we both liked it. And it's so colorful and it full of nutritious goodness, what's not to love? I may try it with baked tofu instead of the seitan in the future, but that's just a personal preference.

Fresh Direct came today, so I'm browsing through Veganomicon deciding what to conquer next. (For you non-NYC'ers, Fresh Direct is basically an online grocery store where you click, order, and then have food magically appear at your doorstep the next day. If you never shopped in a NYC "grocery store" or had to lug said groceries up five flights of stairs, you may not fully appreciate the magic. But it's about as close to waving a magic wand and having food just appear as you can get.) So check back soon!