Year of Goals - #3

I took a class at Whole Foods about "vegetarian cooking for the former meat-lover." It was fun and informative. And full of serious protein which may or may not be a good thing, depending on how you look at it.

I learned how to cook seitan. Seitan is basically pure wheat gluten. You wash a hank of flour dough until all the starch disappears and you're left with a hunk of gluten. Yummy, no? We made mock Asian BBQ beef. It was really, really good. Seitan is a pretty convincing faux meat. But easy does it - all that protein, remember?

I also learned pointers on cooking tofu. Tofu in restaurants is always good but at home I've never been able to make it taste good. Because I was cooking it wrong, come to find out. If you're going to fry it or sauté it or marinate it you first need to soak out all the excess water. Sort of like eggplant. (Something else that never tastes good at home.)

The third main dish we made was a little... different. We made meatloaf out of lentils. I love meatloaf but I did not love the "meatloaf" we made in the class. I understand the basic concept behind making it and I think I could come up with my own recipe for it.

All in all, it was extremely informative and well worth the $25 registration fee. I would recommend it to anyone, not just folks who don't eat meat.