Fake beef - it's what's for dinner!

I've already posted this on various social networks, so I apologize if you're seeing it again.  I'm simply trying to get into the habit of putting things on the blog.

Yesterday, I made 'beef' seitan for dinner.  These photographs show some of the process, along with the end result - a teriyaki stir-fry with orzo.

The first step was making and flavoring the seitan.  You can make it many ways - to simulate, beef, chicken, pepperoni, etc.  I was making a 'beef' chunk version.  All it took was some vital wheat gluten, nutritional yeast, assorted spices, and water.  You can add as much spice as you want, and whatever types.  In this case, I was giving it a moderate flavor so that it could soak up the flavor of the dish.  After mixing everything up and kneading it for a while, it looks like this:

Next, I chopped it up into usable sized chunks.  The seitan expands quite a bit during the process I use in this case (there are other ways to make it that give it a totally different feel):

After it was all chopped up, I placed all of the chunks into a boiling broth.  I made the broth with water, molasses, and Bragg's Liquid Aminos (which is similar to soy sauce):

This shows what the chunks look like after about 30 minutes of cooking in the broth (I generally cook them for about an hour).  Notice how large the chunks have gotten:

After an hour, the seitan chunks are finished cooking. This is what they look like:

I like to put them in the dehydrator for a while.  That gives them a really nice color and texture (note that this only shows one layer, there are actually two layers worth from the dough shown in the first photograph):

And this is what the chunks look like in the teriyaki stir-fry with orzo.  Everything looks and tastes great:

The recipe for the dough can be found here: Basic Seitan recipe used in this meal

Write More, Feel Better!

Apparently, having a regular writing routine provides many benefits.

I wasn't actually doing any writing here, but I used my N800 for writing all of the time.

I recently read a blog post called The Psychological Benefits of Writing. This post discusses expressive writing. That is the process of jotting down what you feel and think. This can range from notes to blog posts to working on the next chapter in your book.

If you get your thoughts put down, you don't lose them.  It sounds obvious, but I can't count the number of times that I've had what I thought to be great ideas - then life happened and I totally forgot about them. This is kind of sad really, because I have carried electronic devices on me for very many years.  Even if I couldn't take the time to jot the thoughts down when I actually had them, I could have used the voice recording function to remind myself of what I was thinking about and then gotten around to writing it down later.

The article touches on how writing can help with:

• happiness
• communicating clearly
• handling hard times
• gratitude
• your “mental tabs” (think "having too many tabs open in your browser")
• learning
• leadership

Visit Gregory Ciotti's post at Helpscout.net, it's worth it: The Psychological Benefits of Writing.