Kids For Sale, Summer Coolers & More Seitan

On our way to take Simon to the dog park, we passed this sign. I couldn't pass it up.
We had such a spectacular weekend. The weather was gorgeous! Friday, Saturday and Sunday were around 24C (approx. 75F), the sun was shining, blue skies, a gentle breeze - perfect! I did have to work Friday & Saturday nights and I had a lot of pink customers. Remember your sunscreen people! We've been covered up for months and our skin isn't used to getting any sun exposure.

Since it was summer-like weather, I decided to try 2 coolers that I've never had before. I thought they sounded very yummy.

I wasn't really impressed. Much too sweet. I wouldn't buy them again.

Now Black Fly Coolers on the other hand are delicious & refreshing, not icky sweet. And they're really nice people. We met them at the Toronto Wine & Cheese show. It's a husband and wife team and they had their parents there helping them out. Very friendly and just nice. (And they're Canadian!)

My seitan adventure continues. I found this recipe on Beverly Lynn Bennett's website and decided to give it a try. It sounded very neutral so I figured I could use it in pretty much anything. When I mixed it up, it seemed a little weird, but I continued on.

I kneaded it for a bit and cut it into two chunks. It looked OK at this point.


After it simmered, I let it cool off in the pot still in the liquid. Once it was cool enough to handle, I transferred it to a plate. I thought it felt kind of odd, so I sliced one of the pieces open.

It was very fluffy and spongey. I don't know what went wrong. I think I measured correctly, but I could have made a boo-boo. I didn't need this right away, so I put the pieces in plastic containers, covered with the simmering liquid and put them in the freezer. I don't think seitan changes it's texture when frozen like tofu does, but I was hoping something would happen with this.

Once thawed, it was the same. It seemed to have absorbed extra liquid because it was really spongey. I squeezed as much out as I could, sliced this up into strips and seasoned with some garlic powder & cumin which was called for in the recipe I was using. I spread the strips out on a baking sheet and put it in the oven hoping it would help them to firm up a bit. It didn't work. I wasn't going to waste this and throw it out. It tasted fine, it just had a weird texture.

This was what I ended up making. I found the recipe here and substituted seitan for the chicken and used vegetarian chicken-flavoured broth. You can see in the picture how the seitan looks spongey.

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It wasn't as bad as I'd feared. The dish ended up being very good and Jim & I both cleaned our plates. I even had enough left over for my lunch.

I am going to try the seitan recipe again because it would make an excellent sub for chicken. I must have must have measured wrong or something. The Vegan Chef wouldn't post a wonky recipe like that.