ivyskeep

I've been trying new recipes again. One we recently tried is Irish sausage rolls from Gemma Stafford at Bigger Bolder Baking. They're absolutely delicious, but that's no surprise as her pastry requires 14 tablespoons of "quality" butter. These were very easy to make, and the pastry can be used for other recipes.

While I'm not a vegan, I enjoy vegan recipes and have found two new favorite YouTube channels. One is Sauce Stache and the other is Plant Based Bistro. Sauce Stache has lots of recipes, but it seems he specializes in creating vegan alternatives to favorite meat dishes. His seitan, aka wheat meat, creations look amazing. I've incorporated some of his ideas into a seitan recipe I have from a '90s-era cookbook and made sloppy Joe's from it. I was impressed. Here's his Laziest, Quickest Vegan Meat Recipe. 

Plant Based Bistro is the product of an adorable husband and wife team, Brian and Derica, based in Florida. They also use seitan, TVP, and tofu as a base for many of their recipes. I was inspired to make my own tofu after watching their tutorial here.  

I had two reasons for seeking out these recipes. One is that I don't need to keep eating so much meat. Two, I'm rotating some food preps out and I needed to use up some TVP and vital wheat gluten. I'm using the gluten for the seitan recipes. I haven't attempted the washed flour version of seitan yet. I don't think it would hurt meat-eating preppers to learn how to make some tasty substitutes to foods they love.

I decided to open a mystery bucket we had in our pantry. I didn't want to keep it as the "thing" lurking in the basement. We usually label food we put away, but we forgot this one. It's wheat berries and looks to be in fine condition. It has been packed in mylar with oxygen absorbers. I'll start grinding some for flour. When our sweet cat Cally was alive, I'd grow wheatgrass indoors from wheat berries. I'd make juice shots for me and give her some of the grass. She loved it.