All hail seitan! (and polenta too...)

Back out the other side of the exams, back out the other side of sandwich purgatory! Hoorah!

To say that I'm happy is an understatement. Occasionally, I find myself breaking into spontaneous dancing when I'm going about minor household tasks. And I'm smiling at work too. Clearly, this is not a normal state of affairs. Hopefully, my work colleagues haven't noticed anything's up!

So, with the exams behind me, I can get back into making some decent meals - ones that don't involve bread. Like this one, which involves quinoa! I don't normally eat a lot of quinoa because I think it's what people think vegans eat and I like to be a contrarian. That's French for idiot, by the way.

Anyway, I like lazy getting my nutrients the easy way, so when I worked out that quinoa and green lentils could be cooked together in the same pot, I was a happy bunny. Add some mint, sprint onion, and avocado and you're away. And some pumpkin seeds. Of course add pumpkin seeds, goes without saying. I should totally be sponsored by pumpkin seeds.

And then I revisited curry. Look, there's three different bits of stuff down there. You can tell I've got some extra free time, right?

It's a bit of an Indian culture clash on the plate - gobi aloo, which I think is a northern Indian dish, and avial and upma, which are southern. I can't remember where the gobi aloo recipe comes from, but the avial one was adapted from the recipe here, just swapping beans for veggies.

Have you tried upma? Upma is savoury semolina, and I love it. Semolina was always a food stuff of terror in my family due to its regular occurrence as a dessert with school dinners. For that reason, we never had any in the house and I got to try it as a grown up as an Indian side dish. I love it. Top tip - it's about the only thing that kept Mr Flicking the Vs going during a terrible throat infection when he could hardly swallow.

And when it's not hot food, it's cold food. I don't eat a whole truckload of salads (pretty much for the same reason I don't eat quinoa) but when I had some mushrooms and asparagus in the fridge, I felt like frying them with soy and sherry vinegar and piling them on a big pillow of leaves. Note: more pumpkin seeds. I should buy shares in pumpkin seeds.

 

And you know what's better than getting into your own kitchen? Getting out and getting into someone else's.

The lovely Essential Vegan, whose cakes are truly tremendous, has now moved to a new location (the ever well-informed Fat Gay Vegan has the details) in Shoreditch and is now savoury food  - along with a few cakes too!

Me and Mr Flicking the Vs went for some burgers, and got these fist-filling seitan burgers!

I'm not a huge seitan fan, but these were really great. You can't see it here but there was some homemade cheese (I'm guessing cashew?) that was absolutely fantastic, and I would have happily have eaten that on its own!

Not pictured up there is polenta fries - another thing I was a bit sceptical about before I shoved them down my neck. They were lovely and crispy, salty and moreish. We would have gone back for seconds if we hadn't already had the last portion!