Month: April 2019

On the first few months of my Vegan journey , my husband brought me to different Vegan and Vegetarian Restaurants in Vienna, Austria. And I was quite amazed by their creations, their recipes of Vegan and Vegetarian foods. Since then, it encouraged me to do something like similar in my own version . It brought me to think about what I can do with something like meat substitute. And that I discovered Seitan.

Seitan is mainly Gluten. It is abundant in protein. Many Vegan use Seitan as their meat substitute. It doesn’t have that real taste of meat though. But it is as good as meat. I started to love it, and most of the time I put Seitan in every dishes I am cooking everyday.

How to make Seitan

Ingredients :

• 1 cup Gluten flour ( or Seitan flour )
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon nutritional yeast
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 onion powder
• 1 tbspoon soy sauce
• 3/4 cup of warm water
• 1 tbspoon of olive oil ( or vegetable oil )

Put altogether the gluten flour, pepper, nutritional yeast, salt, garlic powder, onion powder in a bowl and mix until you feel that the mixtures are being mixed well. Make a whole in the mixture and pour the warm water and oil in that whole. Mix them well. Cover and let it in the bowl for 15-20minutes.

Now for the boiling of the Seitan , put 1/2 Liter of vegetable stock in a pot. Add another 1 tbspoon salt, 1 clove garlic and corn pepper. Cover the pot, put it in the stove, and bring it to boil. When it starts boiling , get the Seitan dough and make 3-4 round forms. One can make any forms from the Seitan dough. Form perfection is not so important here , so dont worry if you do it right or wrong. Throw them all in the boiling vegetable stock, and let it boil in a medium heat for 30 minutes.

And now ready to take them all out from the boiling water. Put all in a bowl and let it cool . One can eat them just like after boiling it or fry them. Frying is best in Seitan. I always fry them first and then mix it to my recipe of the day. My son loves it fry too. In the pictures I posted here looks like I made 6 or more balls of Seitan. Yes, I made more of them because I always refrigerate the rest and that I can use them in the next days. One can make more of course, just double the measurement of the ingredients.

I hope you enjoy making the Seitan recipe, and best of luck for the delicious result of your Seitan 🙂 …

Me and my husband found each other online, yeah ,, in an online dating site. It was in our first chats when he said ,” I am Vegan “. And I was like, OK? .. But I totally have no idea what that word is. I asked him what does it mean? Then he started explaining what is it all about . After he elaborated all those explanations, I was again like ,OK? . hahaha. And I asked myself, ” Is that really possible” ? But, its not that I’m against or dont like those people who are in those kind of life. I’ve never heard that word Vegan before. What I only knew is that word Vegetarian, when I was like 16 years old. And I kind of liked it how I understood that word Vegetarian. I believe that I can live as Vegetarian, to omit meat. When I was young we dont eat meat regularly , because my parents can’t afford to buy meat. We only have it in those special celebrations. And we lived in an island, where FISHING is the main occupation for people’s living. So, we are having fish mostly everyday. Thats why on that time I was thinking like,I can be Vegetarian. I love vegetables too, even though we dont get vegetables everyday in the island. Most plants does not grow there. But , I like that thoughts of care to ANIMALS, they are also like HUMAN. They maybe have a different life like we human have, but not much difference though. Animals are also smart like human beings. Some are stronger than we do. We sometimes even act like an animals. They have feelings like we do. I love animals but not that like having a pet at home. I just love the thoughts of treating each other fairly, human beings or not . We are ONE living in this Planet. We Filipinos, have our traditions, like celebrating birthdays, fiestas, and more occasions to celebrate every year with the families. When I was young, and when there is an occassion, I saw how everyone in our family very busy preparing stuffs for the celebration. Like cleaning,arranging the area how it should look like, and most important is preparing and cooking the food. I saw how they killed that one whole pig, for the meat of that day. While watching them doing that, there was that pain inside in me, and I asked to myself, ” What if I am that pig” ? A little girl felt sad. So, this thing is really in me. That care for animals, for one another. But I grew up used to see those stuffs happening every year, and as a young girl does not understood much yet about life. A girl that enjoys seeing her family happy, bonding with those moments.

Time came, when me and my husband decided to marry, I asked myself ,” Can you really live in a Vegan Life “? . I love eating. I love filipino foods. But my husband never forced me to be really Vegan , I am free whatever my decision is. He knows that the journey will be never easy. I am free what I want to eat. Even though if we will be living together, it will bother him. But ,he wants me happy. I honestly did not knew that time if I could manage that at all. I just said, I will have to get started on it and try to live with it. Nothing to lose ! Pure adventure to be faced. But my idea and understanding Veganism really touched my soul. It made me believe that it is the ” TRUTH “… the ” FUTURE ” . It is something we can do in our life that is really right. Thinking alot about it, I learned lots of benefits of Veganism. It is of course a hard, and a loonnggg process. But one can do it, step by step. Just try to get started on it. It is fine to do Vegan diet in this month, and then next month you go back to your normal diet. And you will learn and see for yourself whats good and bad with it . Just get start on it.

Then I came to Vienna, Austria January 2011. And since that ,I started being Vegan. I cooked Vegan foods, even though I have no knowledge about Vegan foods at all. But with the help of search engines online ( Mr. Google and Mr. Youtube ) , I found some Vegan recipes which I tried to cooked few times already. After my 3 months in Austria, I already started having difficulties, my cravings for meat getting stronger and stronger. But I still managed to be that hard to myself, to sticked with my ” NO to MEAT ” rules. And then it just continuous like that for more than 2 years of my living in Austria with my husband. Year 2013, we decided to migrate Philippines to live there for good . And there ended my Vegan life. I was just sure I can’t be Vegan in Philippines. Lots of temptations. Like I said ,I just love Filipino foods. A real hard journey………………

After 3 years on our living in Philippines, my husband has to go back to Austria for a job. Our migration to Philippines just did not worked like how we planned it. He flew back to Austria alone ,.. our saddest times. Fortunately, it did not took that long for us to be apart . Me and my son flew back to Austria, very happy to be together again and started again our new life. And of course my Vegan life is back. Though it is still very hard again, but I’m more motivating myself. And always excited to cook my versions of some Vegan recipes. And I start to love it when I am successful in my recipes. Which makes me think to share it to you guys , I hope you will like what I will share..