As part of my New Year’s resolutions, I wanted to cook one vegan/vegetarian meal a week. This resolution has been so much easier to keep than I thought, thanks to my friend Denise. She was so kind and gave me a copy of one of her favorite cookbooks: Veganomicon. I flipped through this book at least three times when I first got it. The more I familiarized myself with the recipes, the more excited I became. The recipes sound so good, and use real ingredients. Of course some of the recipes have tofu or seitan in them, but many do not contain either. This excited me. I have decided to share our meatless meals with all of you.  Every Monday I will post a meatless recipe. I hope you will give them a try.

The first recipe I tried was the Chickpea Cutlets. Mainly because I had all the ingredients on hand (or so I thought), and because I thought I would serve them covered in gravy (everything is better with gravy, right?) like a chicken-fried steak. For starters, the recipe calls for vital wheat gluten, I misread it and thought I needed wheat germ. I am sure the texture of my cutlets were different than what the recipe would have produced. I just doubled the breadcrumbs instead of adding wheat gluten. I will try this recipe again, once I get some vital wheat gluten. I served these with a baked potato and blanched broccoli. We did such a good job of having a vegan dinner until we slammed that glass of ice cold milk. OOPS!