Maggie's Homemade Seitan

In the life of a professor, one would think that summer time would be low key. I'm not teaching classes and I don't have to go to work, so I don't have anything to do, right? On one hand, my time could be spent doing nothing. On the other hand, I'd go crazy if I wasn't doing things. On another hand (apparently I'm a mutant?), Shana only has 6 weeks off and summer is the time that we go visiting our families and friends (I'm on a trip right now, actually). On yet another hand, I do actually have work stuff I need to be doing (like manuscript writing, data collection, and syllabi editing/creation). What I guess I'm trying to say is that I haven't had as much time as I'd like this summer to do some cooking. I will be doing more later this month and the early weeks of August though, so don't despair!

In the mean time, I do have a few posts I plan to share with you all. This one, about seitan, is one I've been meaning to share forever. Seitan is a high protein food, but it is not for those who are gluten sensitive or intolerant (as it is wheat gluten). It is easy to make, can be used in a variety of ways, and freezes like a dream. As I've said before, you can buy seitan at the store, but I like the taste and texture of the homemade stuff far more. It's easiest to eat a well-balanced vegan diet if you make sure to include some high-protein foods; seitan totally fits in that category!

Here it's ready to become any number of dinners!

Up until now, I've held off on posting recipes that use seitan as a major ingredient (except for Vegan Baked Ziti). This has been hard, because we often have a meal every week that uses seitan as a primary ingredient. But since this post is here now, I'll be posting more recipes with seitan in the future. 

Seitan cut into strips for Seitan au Jus (one of Shana's favorites). 

Maggie's Garbanzo Pasta

I've been very lucky to have people in my life who love to cook, but more lucky that they've looked at the possibility of cooking vegan foods as a new challenge. For example, early on in my vegan days, my dad always seemed really proud when he could figure out how to make a traditional family dish vegan or when he could figure out a way to make something that would satisfy everyone in the family. Another example is my aunt, who also really likes to cook, and will regularly send me emails containing recipes, new ideas/products, or vegan-related questions. Also relatively early on in my vegan days, we were over at this aunt and uncle's house for dinner. My aunt asked questions about things I could eat and what I liked so that she could make foods for me. She ended up making a dish that I have since referred to as "garbanzo pasta." It was delicious, which surprised me because it included garbanzo beans (chickpeas).

Beans are a really important element of a well-balanced vegan diet. Over the past nearly twelve years (since I went vegan in March 2001), I've slowly learned to incorporate more beans into my diet. Beans are a wonderfully healthy and delicious food to eat, but they were never really something I ate frequently. However, knowing that beans are packed full of protein and fiber, I knew I had to eat more of them. Luckily, garbanzo beans are a great place to start. They have a slightly different texture than most other beans and they pair amazingly with so many foods. Even Shana says she likes them! To bring the story back around, I asked my aunt for the "garbanzo pasta" recipe, tweaked it to what is articulated below, and used it as a springboard to the realization that beans are awesome!

PS. This dish is SO good that when I made it before blogging about it, Shana and I ate all of it before I could even snap a picture (no joke; the one above was added later). So instead, here's the empty pot.

so good, so gone

Maggie's Lentil Soup

Like most of the Midwest, it was really cold here today. It didn't get quite as cold as it did in my home state of Minnesota, but it was still cold enough that many school districts delayed school by two hours. It was also cold enough that my walking buddy and I opted not to walk and carpooled instead (we walk to campus Tuesday and Thursday).

Anyway, since we knew it was going to be cold, that meant we planned for soup when doing our meal planning this week. We always go with wild rice soup in the winter, but I really pushed for lentil soup. Shana wasn't certain, but then remembered that I changed the recipe that last time I made it and that she liked this version better. That's the great thing about lentil soup though, it can be filled with nearly anything, take on multiple different flavor profiles, and will still be good for you! Every vegan cook should have a lentil soup they love. Lentils are a legume, which means they are a high-protein food, and they pair well with just about every soup veggie I can imagine. Plus, dried lentils are available at nearly any grocery store and do not require the soaking and long cooking times that many other legumes require. Just give them a quick once-over and rinse and they are ready to cook!

Vegan While Traveling

On Thursday afternoon I left Indiana to travel to New Orleans for the annual SPSP conference. I've gone every year since my second year of graduate school (which was the 5th SPSP, I think). The good news and bad news about the annual SPSP conference is that it changes location every year. That's good news because I get to see new cities every year. That's bad news because I have to figure out how to eat in new cities every year.

Traveling as a vegan is a lot easier than it used to be, but it still can take a bit of planning. Luckily SPSP provides lunch for me (and I request a vegan one), but breakfast and dinner and any other snacks are on my own. Plus, it's not just while at the conference when I have to figure out food, I have to get to and from the conference. That all adds up to a lot of planning to find food. While this may sound daunting, there are a lot of ways that you can make traveling as a vegan do-able, sometimes even easy!

Let's talk the en route part of traveling. One of the things I learned early on is that traveling with travel-friendly snacks is a must. Travel-friendly snacks are those that won't break easily, are small, and have decent nutritional value. My favorite things to bring as travel snacks are fruit leathers, nuts, vegan jerky, and/or peanut butter crackers (though those break more easily). All of these foods are healthy and aren't things like chips or candy. If you happen to forget to bring snacks, you can certainly find things to eat the airport. For example, every random news/magazine/snack shop will have bags of nuts. You may also be able to find a popcorn vendor, a bagel place, or a smoothie vendor.

However, before you travel, you should make your life easier by planning for when you are actually in your destination. I feel like this is an obvious step, but a simple google search of "vegan and [insert city here]" may find you something interesting. In larger cites, you may find a website specifically for veg*n food/stores in that city. For smaller places, you still may find a gem. But, I don't like to depend exclusively on that information. Instead, I make sure to check with two specific websites before I travel (and usually end up with a printed list of possibilities). My first go to is a website called vegguide, followed by happycow. Vegguide is more likely to be up-to-date, as they will continue to add places that are veg*n-friendly. In contrast, happycow recently decided to list list restaurants that are exclusively veg*n (though they are not removing old listings). Between these two cites, I can always find at least one place that will do for me and for others in my dining party. This trip I came prepared with a 6-page long print out and ended up having a wonderful meal at Carmo. If you're ever in New Orleans and want a delicious (!!!) veg*n meal, it's highly recommended!

The post "Vegan While Traveling" originally appeared on Maggie's LesVegan Kitchen.

BBQ Tofu and meal planning

A blog post about BBQ tofu feels like a cheat of a blog post. By cheat, I mean that this is almost too simple to call a recipe. However, it's delicious and we hadn't had it in a while, even though it's been on the meal plan for the past three weeks. One thing or another came up and we just didn't eat it.

Speaking of the meal plan, I've mentioned it in an off-hand way before, but maybe it's time to make things more explicit. When I was in grad school and Shana was working three jobs, we dealt with food in the following way.
1. Go to the store. "Oh, let's have broccoli* this week." "Good idea!" Purchase broccoli.
2. Come home from school/work. "I'm tired. What do you want for dinner tonight?" "I don't know, what do you want for dinner tonight. I'm tired too."
3. Go out to eat or order food from somewhere.
4. (Eventually) Throw away bad broccoli.
* or any other random perishable food

I mean, we ate at home sometimes, but our meals were not well-planned and were certainly not as well-balanced as they should have been. We finally realized the errors of our ways and instituted a weekly meal plan. A meal plan is a great way to make sure that you aren't feeling overwhelmed by vegan cooking, too!

Here's how we do it. Every Sunday, we sit down with our list of dinners we like (and occasional new recipes when I'm getting antsy for something new), discuss plans that may impact dinners (like meetings or practices or concerts or ...), check the weather, and plan! The plan gets written on a white board that lives on the fridge, we make a list of things we'll need from the store, and then we look forward to dinners every night. Plus, we don't waste mental energy, time, money, or food. It's a delicious win-win-win-win.

Why was I talking about this? Oh yeah! Because BBQ tofu had been on the meal plan for a few weeks, I think that made it especially delicious tonight.

Vegan "Sauces"

We're back (and a bit more tan)! Our week away was wonderful - full of family time, new sights, and new experiences! I managed to get most of my necessary work done while I was gone, which really just means that I'm prepared for tomorrow. Hmm, and when I say "prepared," I mean that only as far as definition 1a of the link (making things ready), but not so much as far as definition 1b (a proper state of mind). I think the real world is going to hit with a vengeance.

Staying with the idea of preparations, however, I thought I'd ease back into blogging by posting about a variety of "sauces" that I make. There are a variety of sauces I make for specific dishes (you'll see a new one later this week), some of which I've posted about already. These sauces can certainly be used for other applications (e.g., the sauce from garlic wine pasta might be decadent over some faux chicken), but this post is dedicated to sauces that aren't for anything specific. You  know, the ones that you might use in other recipes, or for a variety of different applications. Admittedly, this list is based on my own food preferences and experimentations, so I might be missing something you'd assume was here. If that's the case, leave me a comment because I'm 99% positive I've got a recipe for every sauce you can think of in one of the cookbooks I've got or links I've saved. Happy saucing!

Roasting Veggies

Hello lovely readers. My apologies for neglecting you; I've just been swamped. Even now, I should either be grading something, reading something, or prepping something for one (all) of my classes (or doing the dishes or cleaning my side of the bedroom or...), but I just don't have the brain capacity right now. All this is a really long way for me to apologize if this blog post doesn't make any sense. :)

I've created a list of blog posts that I'll eventually get to, but this one about roasted veggies seemed like a perfect post for the changing of the weather (it was 70 two days ago and only got to about 40 today). You might be asking yourself why roasted veggies deserve their own blog post. If so, that's okay. It's just likely that you've not experienced the amazing transformation veggies make in the dry heat of the oven! Plus, if you're new to vegan cooking or eating, roasting veggies makes leads to a different taste compared to any other cooking method. Thus, this is a great way to make it easy to eat any veggie multiple times without it getting old. As far as I'm aware, almost all veggies can be roasted to amazing results. I say "almost" since I've not tried them all, but every one I've tried is amazing. Pair them with a whole grain or some lovely lentil dish, and you've got a complete and satisfying meal.

What I've got in the rest of this post is a basic roasting method, a couple specific combinations we love, and then suggestions for your own future experimentation (plus a beautiful picture my sister took of roasted veggies). So dig in!