I made vegan stroganoff.

Seitan Portobella Stroganoff, to be exact. My spell check suggests "Arrogantly" as a correction for "Stroganoff." It's not inappropriate.

Here are some special ingredients I had to buy just so I could make seitan stroganoff:

- Nutritional Yeast Flakes
- Red wine

Now, the red wine I don't mind -- I drank half the bottle while I made the dish itself (which took OMG so long -- like maybe 3 hours) and it kept me entertained and non-panicky and also dulled the pain of the burn I got on my hand from the skillet I used to sear the seitan.

BUT: Now I have this gargantuan bottle of nutritional yeast flakes and they smell like ass and I don't know what the hell they're good for except seitan stroganoff (since I'm a lame-ass vegan cook and never use stuff like soy yogurt or nutritional yeast flakes even though I probably ought to since every recipe in every vegan cook book I own calls for one or the other though thankfully seldom both). Which wouldn't be a problem except I'm probably never making seitan stroganoff again because it turns out I don't even like stroganoff.

Mr Smarty-Pants enjoyed it a great deal and assured me it was just like the real thing -- or possibly tastier, even -- and I realized something kind of important that I maybe should have thought of before I bought all the ingredients and set on down the seitan stroganoff road: I had never eaten stroganoff before, and I had no way of knowing if I would enjoy it or not. I mean, I had the impression that it was one of those Quintessential 1950's American Dishes -- sort of bland and salty and hearty (and overcooked) -- which is a genre I generally enjoy a great deal. Also, Clark Kent orders stroganoff in the epilogue of KINGDOM COME, which is really kind of the best possible endorsement any dish could ever get.

But it turns out it is Not For Me. Good thing Mr Smarty-Pants is enthusiastic about it, because someone's going to have to eat all those leftovers.


ETA: Here is the recipe I used, from the redoubtable Post Punk Kitchen.