The Unsuspected

I hadn't planned on posting about dinner tonight, but it was so amazing I had to. The dish pertneer (I love that word.) begged me to photograph it in all its lusciousness. After it was all assembled, it was so beautiful I was nervous to eat it. What if it just looked pretty and tasted, well, not so pretty? In the end, I had no reason to be nervous. It was delicious. What is IT you ask? Well.....

I recently bought the book Vegan with a Vengeance by Isa Moskowitz. I have a hunch that we have some lactose-sensitive peoples in our domicile and I'm trying to use less dairy as well as cut down on meat. After looking at a lot of the Vegan/Vegetarian book lists on Listmania at Amazon.com, I found that most people recommended this book. So...tonight's dinner was (almost) straight out of that book: Cold Udon Noodles with Peanut Sauce and Seitan.

I say 'almost' because I used the Homemade Seitan recipe from The Vegetarian Family Cookbook by Nava Atlas. And to toot my own horn, I also sprouted my own beans! They were so cute!

This dinner, heaped on one plate, fed my entire family of seven people. Three adults and four kidlets. It had:
1. udon noodles
2. peanut sauce
3. sesame seeds
4. cucumbers
5. bean sprouts
6. red peppers
7. green onions
AND
8. seitan
And it didn't just have a little. It had a lot of each. A whole package of the noodles, 1/4 c of sesame seeds, are you getting the picture?

That's it. That's what I wanted to tell you: This beautiful dinner was gorgeous, tasted delicious and fed a small army. I guess I was just excited.

P.S. My kids set the table without any guidance from me. They never set it this nice and/or matching. The one day I want to take a picture of the entire table, they decide to line things up and match. Who knew they were capable of such things? It's like backwards Murphy's Law. This never happens to me! (Of course, I did have to catch the painting-prep taped-off windows in the picture as well, didn't I?)