Embarrassed

I have been so lazy about updating. I'm sorry! Tonight, therefore, will be for catching up.

Oh, and BTW

I've lost another two pounds over the last week. If this rate continues, I might look less like Santa and more like Oliver Sacks by next July.

Santa

Oliver Sacks

Day 57/240: Seitanic Salad Sandwich

I cooked up a small batch of seitan tonight. The gluten was mixed with curry powder and stock. I tried something new, though. Instead of simmering the seitan in a flavored liquid, instead I steamed it with plain water.

I was really pleased with how it turned out. It was nowhere near as juicy (soggy) as the simmered stuff. I put about half of the batch into the fridge for a future meal, and chopped up the rest into a fairly small dice. I mixed it with diced celery and diced onions and held the mass together with a tofu mayonnaise.

Two slices of whole grain toast and some additional celery sticks completed the meal. All in all a very successful experiment.

Day 56/240: Roasted Veggies and Rice

Roasted vegetables are getting to be my fallback position. They're tasty, satisfying, easy, and will take many different flavors well.

Tonight's batch was simply half inch slices of white potato, Small white onion halves, and carrot sticks all glazed with honey, green cardamom, and cayenne.  I served it over rice cooked in stock with turmeric.

Day 55/240: Worm Salad

No, of course it's not real worms. I was having so much fun with my rotary cutter that I decided to make a salad with it.

Essentially, I just took a zucchini, a carrot, and an onion and put them through the slicer, then mixed in a vinaigrette style dressing jazzed up a bit with a couple of teaspoons of cilantro chutney and a dried chili.

It's easy to do. Just cut a cylinder of the vegetable, hold the machine with one hand and turn the crank with the other. Then HEY PRESTO!

The carrot works the same way.

I just added the dressing and mixed it all together and added some whole grain toast spread with a mixture of crunchy peanut butter and Hoisin sauce.

Yum.

Next time I'll need to remember to shorten the cylinders. The strands were about 4-5 feet long and just a tad unwieldy.

Sweet Potato Latkes with Roasted Onions and Hummus

This was my dinner tonight.

Ingredients

• 6 small white onions
• 1 medium sweet potato
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 1 Tbs flax meal
• 1 Tbs hot stock
• 1/4 cup chickpea flour
• Olive oil
• Chili powder
• 4 Tbs leftover hummus

Method

1. Heat oven to 350
2. Peel the onions, cut off the ends and slice them in half across the grain.
3. Crush and mince the garlic.
4. Mix the stock with the flax meal.
5. Peel and grate the potato.
6. Put the potato in a bowl and add the garlic, flour, flax and lemon juice. 
7. Mix well. (Add more stock if it doesn't hold together well.)
8. Oil a roasting pan.
9. Form the potato mixture into 4-6 patties and place on the pan.
10. Put the onion halves in the gaps.
11. Mist all the vegetables with an olive oil spray.
12. Dust the potato patties with chili powder.
13. Bake for app 20 minutes.
14. Broil for app 2-3 minutes to get a slight char (optional).
15. Pile hummus in middle of plate and arrange cooked items artistically around it.

I dabbed hummus on each bite of the latkes as I ate them. Delicious!

I should note that my sweet potatoes were not grated. I was given a spiral slicer as a gift, and used it to make this dish. The strands of sweet potato were two to three feet long.

Day 54/240: Lamacun

This is what I had for dinner last night.

Ingredients

• 4 small pitas
• 1/2 can tomato paste
• 1/2 cup TVP
• 1/4 cup dried mushrooms
• 3/4 cup stock
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp coriander
• 1 dried chili
• olive oil

Method

1. Heat the oven to 350.
2. Heat the stock to a simmer.
3. Dry roast the cumin and coriander in a skillet.
4. Grind them fine in a mortar or suribachi.
5. Mix the dry TVP, mushrooms, cumin, and coriander in a bowl.
6. Add the stock and mix well.
7. Grind the chili to powder.
8. Add the chili. tomato paste and a glug or two of olive oil to the TVP.
9. Mix well.
10. Coat a roasting pan with olive oil.
11. Spread the TVP mixture on each of pitas (don't bother to split them) getting it as close to the edge as possible.
12. Put the pitas in the pan.
13. Put the pan in the oven on the middle rack.
14. Bake for about 7-10 minutes.
15. Move the pan to the upper rack.
16. Bake until the outer edge of the crust starts to brown.
17. Let cool for a few minutes.
18. Serve.

A glass of unsweetened lemon water is good with this. If you have lettuce, celery sticks, or zucchini sticks, you can fold them into a lamacun and have a nicely balanced meal.