New Adventures in Dadhood

In the constant quest to eat less meat, I happened upon a dad blog (more on this later) by a dad blogger who was, like me, moving more towards vegan eating. On his site he had this post about seitan, (he didn't give the recipe!), which intrigued me. It's wheat gluten, and according to Moosewood, is a "dead ringer" for meat. Apparently wheat gluten, besides being a common allergen, is used as fake meat in a lot of vegetarian dishes. Not one to buy into the fake meat thing, (why fake it if you can have the real thing?) I was skeptical, but after seeing his vegan Philly Cheesesteak, I was intrigued. I did a search for a seitan recipe and it was actually pretty simple. Not unlike making bread, but much simpler, because once you start kneading it, it forms this clump that's easy to work with, even if it's a little gnarly looking, if unappealing. I'm guessing you hide the stuff in some sort of dark sauce. I even took the courageous step of eating it, and it wasn't bad. Crazy texture, not much flavor. I'm going to try to make a stew, so we'll see how this goes.

I've found more links to the world of dad blogging, and it's pretty substantial out there. I'm not sure how many of those guys are actually the primary caregivers, but a lot of dad's blog. I joined Dad Blogs, for all it's worth, and I guess there's a big community of dad bloggers out there who get together and swap bread recipes.

In our quest to make the perfect loaf of bread, I also went in search of diastic malt, I believe it's called. Never heard of the stuff, but a few bread experts have told me it makes the difference between good bread and life-altering bread. I'm willing to give it a try, if I can find the stuff. They didn't have it at the Coop, so I may need to break out the big guns and head over to King Arthur Flour. Should be interesting.

Until the next time, thanks for reading., and thanks to Jasper Greek Golangco for the pic.