Seeing Green

I did two veggie firsts today....

Carlee and I shared our first Green Shake. I bought 3 bunches of spinach and kale (or something) at the market this week, in hopes of getting more greens in our diet. We really lack in the greens department... Well, I bought them on Friday, and I still don't know what I'm going to do with all of it. This afternoon, I came across an article on green shakes, and I thought it sounded like a tasty way to add some greens to my diet. You basically just make a shake with fruit and greens, so that the fruit taste is sweet, but you're still getting the nutrients from the greens. Mine was 1 apple, 1 pear, and 1/2 cup of fresh spinach. It was really good! I didn't even notice the spinach except my blender didn't get it as small as I would have liked, but the taste was awesome. Even Carlee liked it! :)

I also made seitan (wheat meat) from scratch today, using a recipe from Vegan Planet. Seitan is gluten, or the protein part of wheat. You make it by kneading whole wheat flour in a bowl of water to get all the starch out. You continuously change out the water every time it turns milky white, until it stays near clear. It forms a mass of thick dough-ey stuff. Then you break it into smaller pieces and simmer it for an hour in home made vegetable stock. After it's done cooking, you can put it in the fridge or freezer. Once you want to use it, just follow whatever seitan recipe you have. It took quite a while to make, and I don't even know how we're going to like it in recipes. But once I use it, I'll post an update. I do know, that if we do like it, making it will be a weekend project, and Tony will have to help, and we'll probably make 3 - 4 batches at once.

Now I need to figure out what Carlee and I are going to have for dinner. :)

Edit: I looked pictures up on Google, and I have swiss chard, not kale... lol. And I found some nutritional info on Seitan (on the net): for 4 oz it has 31 grams of protein!!! and 157 calories. It has more protein than tofu. Not bad. :)