Seitan, Lettuce and Tomato Sandwich.....

Remember my lovely garden I started about a month ago? It was all kinds of different lettuce...I am now being rewarded with fresh lettuce every day. The thing about lettuce, the more you pick,  the more it grows! Its great! And its all organic!

I always use to love bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches....then I thought, how could I replicate bacon? Yes, you can buy vegan bacon, but as I've been researching more and more about macrobiotics, I realized that vegan bacon isn't the way to go. Macrobiotics don't believe in any prepackaged foods, natural only. So, I thought about my "Seitan" I had in my freezer...why not try a "seitan, lettuce and tomato sandwich"! That's it....I'll give it a try. I took my square of seitan and cut it into "bacon" strips. I then sauteed it in a skillet with a little canola oil.

I toasted whole grain bread, used some of my yummy fresh lettuce, my "seiten bacon", tomato (I'll have to wait until July for tomatoes from my garden), and Vegan mayonnaise.  A delicious protein rich, low calorie, low fat "bacon", lettuce and tomato sandwich! 
Give it a try....ENJOY! 

Seiten - what is it?

When I decided to become a vegan and later look into macrobiotics I kept reading recipes for "SEITEN", what is it? I saw it in the health food store and bought it...made a recipe using it and it was horrible...so naturally any recipes I found with seiten in it I stayed away from it. Then I started seeing recipes to make your own..Seitan,so I decided to try it. 
Seiten is actually wheat meat. Seitan is made from wheat gluten, made by kneading the bran and starch out of the flour. Eaten raw, its pretty bland (I wouldn't recommend it). But, cooked and mixed with various seasonings, its really quite tasty. Seiten is a great source of protein, and an added benefit, its low in calories and fat. 
I found this recipe for making seiten in "The Real Food Daily" cookbook
Chicken -Style Seitan
Makes 4 1/2 pounds
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon canola oil
2/3 cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon minced garlic
3 1/2 cups gluten flour
1 cup garbanzo flour
2/3 cup nutritional yeast
1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt
1 3/4 cups canned cannellini beans 
1/3 cup tamari
3 cups water
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Line an 8" square baking pan with parchment paper. Lightly oil the parchment paper. Heat the 1 tablespoon oil in a skillet over medium heat,. Add the onion and garlic and saute for 5 minutes, or until tender. Set aside to cool.
Stir the gluten flour, garbanzo flour, nutritional yeast, and salt in a large bowl to blend. Puree the beans, the tamari, the remaining 1/2 cup oil, and the sauteed onion mixture in a blender until smooth, adding some of the water to create a smooth and creamy consistency.  Pour into a bowl, whisk the bean mixture and the  remaining water to blend. 
Quickly stir the bean mixture into the dry ingredients until a very wet dough forms. Transfer the dough to the prepared baking pan and smooth the top. Cover with aluminum foil.
Place the pan of seitan dough in a larger roasting pan, add enough water to come halfway up the sides of the seitan pan. Bake for 2 hours, or until the seitan is firm on top, adding more water to the roasting pan if necessary. Cool the setan to room temperature and cut into 4 equal squares (about 1 pound each).

The seitan will keep for 2 days, covered and refrigerated. This freezes quite well, just wrap the squares separately in plastic wrap, and place in a resealable plastic bag for up to 2 weeks.
Now you can make many wonderful dishes that are really good for you!
ENJOY!

Yoga

I try to exercise at least 6 hours a week. Now...believe me, I'm not a fan of exercising....But....its so important for you and your heart! I've found a new love...YOGA! I've been reading all my new macrobiotic books and they all say do Yoga. Fortunately I'm a member at the YMCA and they have yoga, so I thought I'd give it a try. Love it! Yoga isn't for wimps, let me tell you! You can work at your own pace, believe me, I'm no human pretzel, in fact I'm not very flexible all. I've been practicing Yoga now for about 5 weeks, I've noticed an incredible difference in my body. I may still weigh the same but my skinny jeans fit! (yahoo!)
Yoga must be getting more popular. I picked up this months Consumer Reports "SHOPSMART" magazine and low and behold, they have a article in this months issue on Yoga! As they explain:
There's basically 4 types of Yoga:
Hatha: good for beginners, you learn all the basic poses, not as hard as some of the other types. (I guess this is what I've been doing)
Vinyasa: this is good for people who've been doing yoga for a few months. These classes move more briskly and include basic moves and some more advanced moves (like a back bend). I guess I sort of do a little of this too (not very well though).
Bikram: is good for someone who wants to tone and sweat. Its usually practiced in a 100 degree room!
Iyengar: The old form of yoga, good for everyone. Its great if you have bad knees, or a bad back. This type of yoga involves props such as straps, (helps you keep your legs straight), blocks, (you don't have to stretch as far) and bolsters.
What equipment do you need? A yoga mat, you can get one anywhere, Target, K-Mart, sports shop...usually cost around $20.
Yoga isn't for woman only...in my yoga classes there's several men.
If you want to try Yoga at home, try a couple of different DVDs. Consumers Report suggests several, I've never tried this one but it sounds like a good place to start: "Rodney Yee's Yoga for Begginers".Give Yoga a try, you might just love it!

Grilled Vegan Pizza

I love pizza...its probably one of the hardest things I've given up as a vegan....cheese that is...I still try pizza at my local pizza shop without cheese of course. But what's a pizza without cheese? Fortunately there's several different "vegan" cheeses out there that are really tasty, usually made from soy or rice. So the other day I decided to make my own pizza. I'm always watching Food Network, I was watching "What Would Brian Botanio Make" (yes the figure skater), and he made this really good looking pizza on a grill. I thought "hmmm, I'm going to try that but make it with my kind of ingredients!" He showed you how to use your grill as a brick oven. Its really quite easy, just lay your grill grate with

bricks, I used about 10 (you can get bricks from any 
hardware store). Lay them out like this........









then place a pizza stone on top of the bricks.Cover, turn grill on high and heat to 500 degrees. Allow the grill to heat for at least 30 minutes so the bricks and stone get nice and hot.

Before you start the grill, prepare your ingredients.For a vegetarian pizza start with lots of fresh veges, I used, mushrooms, asparagus, red onions, red and green peppers, zucchini and yellow squash. I placed them on baking sheets, drizzled with safflower oil and sprinkled with Italian seasonings, place in a 450 degree oven for 30 minutes. You can make this well ahead of time and set aside.
Oh, I forgot....the crust! This was so easy! 
Here's the ingredients
1 1/4 cup of warm water
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
1/2 teaspoon sugar
3 3/4 cups of unbleached white flour (or all-purpose flour)
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil, plus 4 tablespoons, divided
1/4 cup cornmeal
In the bowl of a standing mixer, combine the 1 1/4 cups of warm water, sugar and yeast. Let sit for 5 minutes until the yeast begins to bloom. The water should get foamy and bubbly when ready, if it doesn't, you have bad yeast. Add the 3 3/4 cups of flour, salt and 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Mix in the mixer fitted with a dough hook on medium speed until the dough is smooth, soft and stretchy, about 5-7 minutes. (If you don't have a stand mixer, you can do this in your food processor). 
Remove the bowl from the mixer and cover it with a a damp towel. Put in a warm spot until the dough has doubled in size, about 1 1/2 hours. Punch the dough down and remove it from the bowl. Divide the dough into 2 equal parts and roll into balls. Put on a floured cutting board covered with a towel and let rest about 1 1/2 hours. 
Now the fun begins! 
On flour surface roll half of dough into 12" round. Cover the backside of a sheet pan with about 2 teaspoons of cornmeal. Now place your dough round onto the sheet pan (this is your pizza paddle). Brush about 2 tablespoons olive oil on dough.  Top with sauce (use any marinara recipe you might have),
roasted vegetables, soy cheese, and yes I used soy pepperoni! 
Carefully slide the pizza onto hot pizza stone. (this was the tricky part) Cover and let cook for about 10 minutes until nice and brown and bubbly. 

Carefully remove from grill, slice and 
ENJOY!  

Macrobiotic

I've been reading and rediscovering my vegetarianism/veganism ways. Along the way I've discovered macrobiotics. I touched upon it awhile back. Macrobiotics isn't only what you eat, its a way of life. I've discovered many wonderful books. I'm reading two different books on macrobiotics at the moment (don't ever start 2 books at the same time...its difficult!) One of the books is from a wonderful author, "Cristina Pirello", she has a series of books, the one I'm reading is "Cooking the Whole Foods Way".
 Christina is an amazing woman, she found out at the age of 26 that she was diagnosed with an acute form of leukemia, that doctors told her she was terminally ill, they told her she had 6 to 9 months. Wow! I couldn't imagine. I had cancer, Hodgkin's, one of the most curable of cancers. Of course I went through 3 months of chemo followed by 4 weeks of radiation, which damaged my arteries, so I experienced open heart surgery later. I didn't consider any other forms of treatment.  Christian did. She discovered macrobiotics. She fortunately met someone who introduced her to the macrobiotic lifestyle. Eating fresh foods, discovering what certain foods do for your body. After fourteen months, she was declared totally free of leukemia cells. She was cancer free. That was 24 years ago! The father of macrobiotics George Ohsawa also was very sick, he discovered eating certain foods, became healthy. Thus the birth of macrobiotics Aren't you just a little curious to read about macrobiotics now? 
I know, you'll probably thinking, I don't have cancer, heart disease, I'm fairly healthy.....I don't really need macrobiotics....but you do. Wouldn't you like a simpler way to eat? A fresh approach to food?  Since I've become vegan, I rarely have a sleepless night. I feel energetic, I feel a spark I never had before. 
Macrobiotics eat and live naturally, choosing foods that are seasonal.  Philosophy also plays a major role in macrobiotics. Living in harmony with nature and people around you.
Another fun book I'm reading is by Jessica Porter "the Hip Chick's guide to Macrobiotics"She has a humorous way of looking at macrobiotics. Humorous yes, but very informational.
All of the books I've mentioned have wonderful recipes of which I will share with you as I discover them.
I guess I've been working up to this, I still consider myself vegan, of which most macrobiotics are. Macrobiotics do eat fish from time to time...as do I...so I guess really I've been a macrobiotic all along.....