Vital Wheat Gluten

I've often read about vital wheat gluten in American cookbooks. It seems that rather than knead a ball of flour in a bowl of cold water for hours to get seitan, you simply mix the powder up with water and you're good to go.

You can buy it online, but it would mean ordering a load of other stuff to make the postage worthwhile. Then today I wandered over to the market to purchase some oats and noticed they had gluten powder! I can't wait to give a go. I'll be able to make loads of recipes I've dismissed in the past. Yippee!

I tried the cauliflower and millet mash again last night. This time I dipped it in flour prior to frying ass suggested by Rose Eliot. It ended up being more like a hash and actually rather reminded me of my Dad's corn beef hash. This was probably due to the large quantity of veggie Lea and Perrins added. It was certainly more tasty then the original but still not something I'll be breaking my neck to produce one the two tubs in the freezer are gone.

Pure

What's going on with Pure margarine? I used to buy it from Holland and Barrett every week or two depending on how much baking I was doing. A couple of times they were out of stock, but it was the end of the day so I didn't think much of it.

I'm now struggling to recall the last time I saw it actually on the shelf. The Coop don't stock it (not sure if they ever did). The only alternative with no dairy is Vitalite (which only some Coops stock)

When did marg become a rare and exotic item that needed to be carefully sourced?

Planet Organic

I recently ran out of nutritional yeast. Nutritional Yeast unfortunately doesn't not seem to be something that can be picked up easily in any old health food shop (Holland and Barrett take note!). I love visiting the kind of places that sell it (like the Natural Way) and browsing all the marvellous things on sale. Alas I knew that I was not going to be near a branch of the Natural Way and was trying to work out if I should arrange a trip and when I might be able to fit it in.

Yesterday I had to go to London for a meeting so I decided to see if there were any health food shops near where it was taking place. I was just thrilled to discover that there was a branch of Planet Organic just two streets away.

Oh and what an experience. It was so much larger than I expected with so many more things. The staff must have thought that I was a bit strange or was about to start shoplifting because I just couldn't decide what to buy. Alas I hadn't taken a cool bag so I couldn't buy any frozen food (but next time I will). I had to restrain myself from buying a vegan calzone, spinach wrap, rice ball or sushi to eat immediately (when I had sensibly packed my own lunch).

What I did buy was Larabars (Kenny has talked about them so much), a Nana's cookie (which could almost actually be good for you), some kind of chewy seitan and hemp bar (very chewy and very tasty), squirty soya cream and the nutritional yeast (imagine if they hadn't had any).

I then began to worry about how much stuff was imported and wrapped in plastic. Hence I'm trying to see the products I bought as inspiration rather than things that are about to become regular additions to my diet! It's just so good to go somewhere where vegan food is normal. I now really understand the phrase about children in sweet shops. Being vegetarian/vegan restricts your choices. If you go out to eat or buy a snack or lunch there will probably be only 2 things on the menu that you can eat. They will also probably be really worthy stuff (a salad when your pals are overloading in fat and carbs), foods that you would never have chosen to eat (I have only ever eaten Mushroom stroganoff in a restaurant) or really boring food (tomato sauce and pasta).

So being somewhere where there are dozens of choices is difficult. I'm not used to having to make such decisions. I'm out of practice!

P.s. Unlike some other shops they immediately understood that I wanted to use my own bag.