VeganMoFo: day two

Ok, so it's a bit hard to remember you need to blog every day when you're not used to it, but that's the point of the challenge. I think I just need to get into the groove (and hopefully some of our other bloggers can chime in too). I thought I'd expound on the seitan pepperoni I mentioned yesterday (because it's tasty and I have some pics of the process, like this close-up of the dry ingredients).

I will be the first to admit that I'm not much of a blog surfer and just looking at the list of all the bloggers participating in VeganMoFo is overwhelming for all the food ideas that are out there. When I cook, it's pretty improvisational or we use a tried and true recipe (like the mac and cheese from the New Farm Cookbook). I really haven't explored the wealth of options in our many cookbooks. So it goes without saying that I never thought about making seitan (although I think my housemates in college made it once--my memory's a bit fuzzy. I know we made veggie burgers and soy milk. good times!). To be honest, my favorite protein is tempeh (which I need to look into making myself too), then tofu, and then I enjoy seitan the now and then that we have it (Herbivore's grilled seitan sandwich, holiday Tofurkey). We also usually don't buy it because it seems pretty expensive for the amount you get. So it was a revelation when our friend Adam suggested we get together to make some seitan. It was such a novel idea. Little did we know that it was so so easy. Now, it's not particularly cheap (vital gluten flour is a lot more expensive than your all-purpose white flour), but the fun of making and flavoring it yourself and then enjoying the fruits of your (very small amount of) labor far outweighs the expense, and if you broke it down, it would probably still come out less than buying it from the store, and you can save on some of that packaging.

This was from our 2nd attempt and we decided to throw in some fresh herbs from the yard. It would be better to chop the herbs up a little more than we did here so that they stay in the mix better, but it was a nice little addition. It does make you appreciate the flavors of Field Roast sausages though (we think apple sage is the tastiest). I think next time I'll try to be a little more experimental, but I was just getting the hang of this recipe and enjoying it. Here's a pic of what it looks like getting mixed up.

I won't include any more pics in its shaping process, because to be honest, it looks rather turd-like. But once it's cooked up, it's yummy and you forget all about that. We've yet to try it on pizza because we just end up eating it straight, although I did manage to forgo enough to include it in a Teese bake. All this talk of food is making me hungry. I might need to go whip up another batch of pepperoni. And then we can all go play Palin Bingo as we watch the debate. Sadly, I think we're all going to win.