My Favorite Dinner

Mmm...seitan and veggie stir fry! I was introduced to seitan by the wonderful, health-conscious mother of the kids in my neighborhood who I used to babysit. Part of the family ate a vegetarian diet and part ate meat, so seitan was a popular item in their house. Thank goodness for that, because it's one of my favorite meat substitutes, now!

I went for seasonal veggies to add to my stir fry - thin asparagus stalks, carrots and a summer squash from my garden. As you can see in the photo, I also used onion, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, teriyaki sauce and of course, the seitan. Not pictured are the olive oil and rice.

The process is simple and uses one pan and one pot, at most. In a large frying pan, pour enough olive oil in the bottom to almost cover the the surface. Start with your peeled and slice carrots and seitan (I pull it apart into smaller pieces). Let them simmer a couple minutes on their own, and then add the minced garlic, ginger (I love the zing it adds, so I use about a teaspoon) and chopped onion (this was a small, yellow onion - I used half). The reason why I don't add the onion and garlic immediately is because they have a tendency to burn when heated the entire time. Next, add the squash, followed by the asparagus (washed and cut, of course). Finally, add the teriyaki and soy sauces in whatever amounts suit your taste.

As you can tell, I add my ingredients to the frying pan based on the length of time I want that particular ingredient to cook. The carrots and seitan need much longer to cook than the asparagus. I lucked out and already had a large portion of basmati rice leftover from dinner two nights prior, so I put it right into the frying pan and stirred it up with the seitan, veggies and sauces until it was completely heated. Talk about an an easy meal! This is one of my absolute favorites...now if I could just get Ashley to eat veggies...