I’m getting better at converting regular recipes to vegetarian recipes. Obviously, this is not an issue with most things, it’s easy enough to take out the meat or use a different protein like tofu or beans or whatever. Tonight, I went crazy and made veggie and dumplings. It’s simmering away right now. Smells so good.
I’m getting better at this, problem was retraining myself. I’d been shying away from carbs, eggs and a whole passel of veggies. It was almost pavlovian and I had to retrain myself. The results are happifying!
I need to get back in the habit of having homemade seitan on hand. I use this recipe, but I’ve modified it quite a bit to suit my uses. It’s an excellent recipe.
Okay, I just got my bowl and I’m in heaven! So good. Next time I need to make more stew to go with the amount of dumplings (or halve the dumpling recipe). It’s thick and comforting and you don’t really miss the chicken at all. I added some tvp I found in the pantry, you can find it but the bits are pretty small and get lost.
For the record, I’m not vegetarian, I just keep dating them.

yeah, so OSX’s Sherlock comes with Systrans translating software. It’s fun. I use it too often. I expect a spanish speaker to tell me what’s what with this phrase.
So, as you might have gathered from the title, last night was sushi night over at Keith’s. I helped with prepping the fish, getting things cut and mixed and whatnot. I rolled up one veggie roll, went to have a cigarette (i know, I quite, but the beer was flowing freely and you know how that goes) and I didn’t have to do anything else. Nice.
The thing is, everyone knows how to make sushi nowadays, it’s the thing to do. There were 8 of us and I think 6 knew how to and wanted to roll and I was happy to finally step out of the kitchen and let people go for it. Of course this would never happen in my own kitchen, I’m too much of a kitchen control freak for that, but in someone else’s house I’m cool.
As per usual, there was more fish and therefore more sushi than is healthy for people to eat. I’m pretty sure that David almost got rice poisoning or something from all the sushi he ate. At one point we did try to convince keith to overdose on wasabi so we could take him to the hospital.
I brought my wasabi to this shindig. I use Penzey’s wasabi, not the pure stuff, just the natural stuff. It’s what we all know and love and why change. Thing is, Penzeys makes one hell of a strong wasabi and when people are used to the wiener wasabi that comes with the pre-packaged sushi at the grocery store, this stuff can be downright painful. Doesn’t matter how many times you warn people, though, they don’t listen. Love that eye-popping buzz from across the table. I love wasabi. Love it. Love it but don’t want to be in huge pain so i am all about moderation with the crazy Penzey’s wasabi.
After dinner we had green tea (or mango for the boring folks) mochi, ice cream balls wrapped in a sheet of glutinous rice. yum. also yum.
We watched 30 second movie re-enactments and then tried to introduce them to Happy Tree Friends, but I think that didn’t go over so well. I don’t know, I was highly amused.
Late night, fun times, I need a nap.