Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Seitan & Mushroom Fajitas

Well, I warned you that you might see the homemade seitan that I made this weekend again, and here it is. For these delicious fajitas, I simply sliced up about a pound of the seitan I made using the recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and cooked it in a skillet with a bag of frozen onions & 3 pepper medley, a couple of packets of storebought fajita seasoning (carefully checked the ingredients to make sure there was no beef fat or whey or anything else snuck in), and a can of mushrooms. That's it.

I thought about assembling a couple of fajitas and then wrestling with them to try and fit them into the lunchbox, but then I had a better idea. I'm not sure if this has been done before over on Vegan Lunch Box or over at the Laptop Lunch FLICKR Group, but I just put the fajita "stuffing" in the container and then laid two tortillas out flat inside of the lunchbox lid (they fit perfectly). After I finished packing the rest of the lunchbox, I simply covered all four containers with a piece of Glad wrap (so nothing would get on the tortillas) and then closed the lid. It all fit, and I didn't have to struggle to squeeze two fajitas into one of those plastic containers. It's probably been done before and I just haven't seen it. But if YOU haven't seen it, it's definitely a good way to pack something that goes on tortillas rather than filling them and then trying to make them fit.

For the rest of today's lunch, I brought some fat-free vegetarian refried beans that just came out of a can. I like them a little thinned out with some soymilk.

Then I packed some chips & salsa using some of the new Tostitos Multigrain Chips that they seem to have been advertising the whiz out of here lately, and some homemade Jericho Salsa that I made using a recipe from Cafe Max & Rosie's Vegetarian Cooking with Health and Spirit. This is a really good cookbook that I picked up at a bookstore over in Asheville, NC. The sad thing is that Cafe Max & Rosie's was a vegetarian restaurant that was actually located there in Asheville, but I believe it is closed down now. I could be wrong. I believe there are at least one or two people who read my blog who are from Asheville or Weaverville who might be able to clear this up and let us know more about what happened to the restaurant.

Anyway, the salsa is very delicious and came from the TOP SECRET portion of the book, which are actual recipes that were used at the restaurant. You know, the ones that people asked for all the time but couldn't get. I think that is so cool when restaurants share some of their famous recipes. But again, good salsa, excellent!

Well, that does it for Wednesday. Based on the responses about the fast food thing, yeah, I think a week straight would probably not be good. It would definitely be unhealthy, and probably get boring too. So I guess I'll just start documenting some fast food choices occasionally, like I have been doing with some of the local places. I've got a business trip coming up at the end of this month, and there may be some of it worked in there because this will be my first business trip as a vegan and there's no telling what I will resort to eating. I've done this trip before as a vegetarian, but not as a vegan. So that should be interesting. I will be going to Pittsburgh, so if anyone knows of any restaurant that a hungry vegan should not miss in that city, please let me know.

Thanks for stopping in. Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow!

P.S. I just added the coolest thing to this post. I hope this works for everybody. If you go back up to the picture of today's lunchbox and move your pointer around on the picture, when you stop moving over each compartment, text should pop up and tell you what each thing is as you move and stop over each different item. You don't have to click or anything, unless you want to, in which case you will just see a large version of the pic. But just moving the pointer around the small pic should bring up automatic little text boxes which tell you what is in each compartment. I'll probably continue to do this from now on, unless it causes problems with some people's browsers or something like that. Nothing groundbreaking. I just thought it was cool!
FLOUR TORTILLASTOSTITOS MULTIGRAIN CHIPSJERICHO SALSASEITAN & MUSHROOMSREFRIED BEANSFORK & SPOON

12 comments:

kennyboy said...

They remind me of those SUN CHIPS.

They're good.

:o)

Anonymous said...

If you're going to be in Pittsburgh on a Sunday morning, you must go to Zenith! It's this great little vegetarian restaurant inside an antique shop. Every Sunday morning they have a vegan brunch - you order something off the menu (usually there is one egg option, but the rest is vegan) for $10, and then you also get a huge buffet of self-serve vegan sides AND a buffet of amazing vegan cakes and pies! It's basically the most amazing place in the world - even my mom who pretty much hates everything without dairy thought the vegan peach pie was the best peach pie she'd ever had.

If you go, get there early (around a half hour before it opens) because it fills up fast and you don't want to miss the sides and cakes.

Here's the website:
http://www.zenithpgh.com/menu.htm

It doesn't list the Sunday brunch menu since it's different every week, but I have never been disappointed.

Raquel said...

Nice blog. The food looks yummy. :)

Anonymous said...

The new labels on the pictures are awesome!! And your food always looks so tasty!!
--K

Brooke said...

Another excellent usage of seitan! I bet I could get my husband to try this, as he loves fajitas a whole lot. :-)

Oh, and thanks for linking me! And I like the picture text boxes, that is a good idea!

Anonymous said...

Hi Kenny,

I made the jerk seitan from VwaV, last night, and my husband couldn't eat it fast enough! He wanted more but I had only marinated a little bit since I wasn't sure if he would like it. Even though it was the store-bought seitan it was really tasty rolled in a tortilla. Thanks for the tip - I think I will start making items you have listed from VwaV, since I know they'll be good!

Anonymous said...

a new reader from Asheville here--your blog is great and gets me inspired (especially since I've been experimenting with making seitan lately and have been trying to come up with things to do with it). Max and Rosie's did close down about a year ago--sad times for Lexington Ave. But the next time your downtown, go further down the hill on Lexington (towards the bridge) to a very vegan place called Rosetta's Kitchen. I could eat their peanut butter tofu and broth of life all day long...

kennyboy said...

Thanks jc. I plan on eating at Rosetta's Kitchen soon and taking some pics of my food.

A friend of mine has eaten there and he said it was really good.

I also want to try out that pizza place where they have they movie theater in the back where you can watch a movie for $1 or something like that. Do they really have casein-free soy cheese there for the pizzas?

Well, chava, I won't be there on a Sunday, so no brunch for me, I will probably try to hit that place at some other point during my trip. I need to investigate their website and check out their hours. Thanks for the info.

And harini, I think I have officially reached the point where I just assume that ANYTHING out of that cookbook is going to be good. Hahahaha

Anonymous said...

You're thinking about Asheville Pizza and Brewing (called the Brew and View around here usually though). Even bad movies are fun there, and how bad can a 2 buck movie really be? I just checked the menu (www.ashevillepizza.com) and didn't see anything about soy cheese, but I seem to remember seeing something about it at the restaurant...

Anonymous said...

Do you have the laptop lunch carrying case? You might be able to put the tortillas in the top zipper compartment or rolled up gently where the water bottle would go.

kennyboy said...

Oooh. That's a great idea, to roll tortillas up and put them where the water bottle is.

THANKS!

Anonymous said...

Just so ya know, what you did with the "fajita filling" is actually what fajitas are. Fajitas aren't tacos. The filling is what is called fajitas, the tortillas are sort of like a condiment. So your lunchbox was both efficient and authentic.