Mock Meat & Noodle Toss

Today's lunch came about as the result of a day long cooking marathon that I had yesterday. I don't know what got into me, maybe it was just because it was too cold outside to do anything else, but I just had the urge to cook yesterday. I made several things, a couple of which are present in today's lunchbox. It'll be a day or so before I can enjoy some of the other things because they are raw vegan dishes, and well, take some time with all the soaking, sprouting and dehydrating that you have to do. One thing that I definitely knew that I wanted to do yesterday was make some seitan. It's been a while since I've made any and it seems like new seitan recipes have been catching my eye a lot here recently out on the vegan message boards. Now, I had gotten into the habit of baking my seitan the last few times that I made it because I just HATE throwing all of that cooking broth out. Making those vegan chicken & dumplings a while back got me thinking though. Why do I need to throw the broth out? It's tasty. In the chicken & dumpling recipe it's easy, because the broth becomes the "soupy" part of the dish. When making "beef-style" seitan though, like I did yesterday, I mean, why do I need to throw the broth away? I could just re-use it to make some "beefy" rice or something like that. At any rate, I made myself a nice batch of beef style seitan and I saved the broth so I can experiment with it later in the week.

I used the seitan recipe found in La Dolce Vegan by Sarah Kramer. It's probably the easiest boiled seitan recipe that I know of, and I really like the taste and texture of it. I would have made the baked type, but I was out of aluminum foil. Curses! Anyway, it came out delicious. Then I chopped a little bit of it up and used it in a recipe found in the same cookbook called "Mock Meat & Rice Noodle Toss". I didn't have any rice noodles though, so I just substituted Soba noodles. No big whoop. It came out really good. I would certainly like to cook this again sometime. It's basically just grilled seitan, onions and some edamame all cooked in some homemade Teriyaki sauce and then served over noodles. How could that not be good?

To go along with my main course, I also brought along some Raw Sugar Snap Peas. And I also brought along the thing that was probably most responsible for starting my cooking session yesterday, and that's Joanna's Lemon Butter Rice. It had been a couple of weeks since I made it last and I was craving it yesterday, so I just whipped up a big batch. I ate most of it yesterday, but managed to save a little bit for the lunchbox. I may have to make some more tonight if I want to enjoy it any more this week.

I also tossed in a few Raw Cashews. I just got these from the bulk bin at the health food store. Unfortunately, these are just the broken pieces, not the nice whole nuts, which are so much prettier. The broken ones are like half the price though, and I bought them with the intention of making some raw "cheeses" from them, so I figured why waste extra money on whole cashews if I'm just gonna' grind them up. I haven't gotten around to trying that yet though, and cashews never last long at my house. So no matter what I bought them for originally, if they sit in the fridge for more than a day or two, I am gonna' get in 'em. I think I could eat my weight in cashews.

And speaking of weight, when I weighed myself this morning, I weighed 203 lbs. That means that I lost another 2 pounds last week and have now lost a total of 22 lbs. (just a little more than halfway to my goal of losing at least 40 pounds). I'm starting to get a little excited now because I think my weight loss is really obvious now. Several people commented on it this weekend, and it's really starting to show in my face, which is great. I guess I've lost 10% of my body weight now (from my starting point of 225 lbs.) and that's supposedly an important milestone because losing 10% of your body weight supposedly lowers your risks for a variety of ailments significantly. I just remember that you got your own special star for that on Weight Watchers Online.

I was actually a little bit lower than this at one point last week, after eating 100% raw for a couple of days, but I guess switching back to regular food for the rest of the week averaged it all out to a 2 pound loss. I'll probably have another raw day or two here pretty soon as some of this "fancier" stuff that I'm working on gets completed, so it will be interesting to see what happens. I've lost track of exactly how many weeks I've been at this now, but I've obviously settled down into the 2 lbs. per week weight loss mode. That's what everything I've ever read has said is a healthy rate of weight loss, so I guess it's all good. I'm really excited that I've managed to shed 22 lbs. so far and I can't wait until I finally get back down to 185 (or less). Before that though, I'll also be really excited in another week or two when my weight doesn't start with the number 2 anymore. There's just something psychological about weighing 199 lbs. instead of 200 lbs. I can't wait until I drop below 200. Hopefully, it won't be long.

So there's my lunch and the weight loss update for Monday. It's been a while since I've had a good seitan dish, and this one just reminded me of how much I like the stuff. I've got a good amount of it made up now, so perhaps I'll try out some of those other interesting recipes that I've seen floating around on the internet.

Thanks for coming by today and I'll see everybody tomorrow.