Vegan for a week!

We had roast beef at mom and dad's on the 16^th, steak dinner on the 19^th, and yet more roast beef for dinners starting on the 21^st, skipping a day and finally ending the onslaught of beef dinners on the evening of the 23^rd. I was ready to go meatless for a while. Right now, I'm officially eating vegan, but I might let up a bit later in the week and allow eggs and/or fish.

Kara opted to have President's Choice Meat Lasagna — her favourite — with her dad for dinners early this week, and I chose to make up a batch of Mary's Test Kitchen's Beefy Seitan so that I could use up the cheesesteak-style toppings (shallots/onions, green bell peppers, mushrooms, and Daiya I gathered last week — knowing how much beef we'd be eating — yet neglected to use.

The seitan really does benefit from a bit of extra browning in an oiled pan and I think I'll try doubling the amount of flavouring agents in it the next time I make it. The resultant mock meat is most reminiscent of beef, but lacks the assertive flavour, despite the fact that the "broth" component smelled beefy. Still, it makes for a delicious lunch which I've been eating on "buttered" toast with Chipotle Vegenaise. Definitely not for cheesesteak purists, but amazing in its own right.

For yesterday's dinner, I made up a batch of green coconut curry rice as per The Complete Guide to Vegan Food Substitutions recipe for Red Coconut Curry Rice, substituting short grain brown rice for the Jasmine rice called for in the recipe, sunflower seed butter in place of the peanut butter, and green curry paste in place of the red. I stir-fried sliced carrot, onion, mushrooms, and green beans to serve over the rice. This marked the second time I've made this rice recipe and it's safe to say I love it.

For dessert, I ate a couple of vegan, date-sweetened brownies. They're the result of a recipe I've been working on for a while and am just about ready to publish, so stay tuned.

Homemade English muffins

I used Chef John's recipe, doubled, using a whole duck egg in place of two egg whites. These are intriguingly fluffy and hit the spot with an over-easy duck egg for brunch today.

Homemade common-allergen-free bibimbap!

Not gonna lie: having this many food allergies and sensitivities sucks. Since Kara was born, my body has lost the ability to process chicken eggs, soy, and bananas. Add that to all of the other things my body hates and the only common food allergen that I can still eat without consequence is wheat (which is good, 'cause my only meat-like substitute these days is seitan — and I'm trying to eat that sparingly, lest I develop a sensitivity.

But yeah, I missed the simple, quick and easy meals I had next-to-no-time to throw together when Kara was a baby, like egg sandwiches or — in my predominately Korean neighbourhood, with grocery stores to match — bibimbap.

So it was a revelation to discover, just before Christmas of last year (i.e., about 3 months ago) that people with chicken egg allergies can sometimes eat duck eggs without difficulty. That was around the time that I picked up a 6-pack from the local Chinese grocery and tried it in my baking, thinking that having trace amounts of a single egg across a batch of shared baked goods would be a good litmus test for sensitivity on my part. I'm happy to report that not only did it work out, but that I've since been able to branch out into making duck egg-intensive foods like tamago-yaki without ill effect.

When you factor in the fact that I've recently been mainlining episodes from Maangchi's YouTube cooking channel, it's not hard to see how I might've arrived at the conclusion that I ought to try my hand at making bibimbap. And so it was that I had a common-allergen-free bibimbap as my early lunch today. This one features short-grain brown rice, blanched spinach with chives, and "sweated" and stir-fried carrots, zucchini, cucumber, and red bell pepper. It was topped with an over-easy duck egg. Everything was seasoned with salt, sunflower seed oil, and garlic.

I began the vegetable prep work last night to minimize the amount of time that'd take today. It was fairly time-intensive, but I think the results were well worth it. I had an unbelievably delicious, nutritious, and quick-to-assemble meal option today and still have plenty of the vegetables left over for later in the week.