Monthly Archives: August 2010

The Seitan Recipe o Greatness

Not original by me.  I picked this recipe up from a vegan blog, where it was already second-hand.  It seems that this recipe has been blazing through circles of seitan enthusiasts online.  I’m not vegan, but I love seitan.  The stuff is a little bit like tofu  – gluten, the proteinaceous part of wheat, molded and formed into chewy deliciousness.  It’s also hideously expensive.

Vital wheat gluten is not so cheap either ($2.50 for the 1 and a half cup it took to make this recipe), but it was still worth trying.  So, without further ado,

THE SEITAN RECIPE O GREATNESS

  • 1.5 c. vital wheat gluten
  • 1/4 c. nutritional yeast (Not sure what nutritional yeast is, actually.  I used 1/8 c. of baker’s yeast instead.)
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 2 tsp. paprika
  • 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp. cumin
  • 1/2 tsp. pepper
  • 1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
  • 1/8 tsp. allspice
  • 3/4 c. cold water
  • 4 tbsp. tomato paste
  • 1 tbsp. ketchup
  • 2 tbsp. olive oil
  • 2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce or soy sauce
  • 1-3 cloves garlic, crushed (Naturally, I opted to use 3.)

Assembly could not be simpler.  Preheat oven to 325º.  Mix together all the dry ingredients in one bowl and all the wet ingredients in another.  Then add the wet ingredients to the dry, stir it, then knead the heck out of the dough.  Form it into a log, wrap it in foil, then bake it for 90 minutes.  Let it cool down completely before you do anything with it.

Chewy, salty, savory, and great.  My seitan popped its foil wrapper, though, so it ended up looking like a turd in the oven.  Wrap it up in extra foil?  Or is it because I used baker’s yeast?

Wheat gluten, the hard-to-find main ingredient.

O Greatness?

The final product. Check out that texture!

Zwitterion Update

A few weeks back I mentioned the possibility that I’d post a new, Expand-O version of Zwitterion on this site.  Haven’t got any nibbles from the U of M’s newspaper about syndicating it, but I’m starting to think that’s just as well.  My schedule is in flux right now, and if I happen to miss a week when I’m just posting it on my blog, that’s okay.  Now I need to figure out where I can get ready access to a scanner and Photoshop … and some free time …

And there’s further news on the Confederacy front, too.  Podiobooks has scheduled The Confederacy of Heaven to come out on September 23.  (They have a lot of audiobooks in the pipeline right now.)  The Smashwords edition and the blog version will still be here on September 15, though.

Confederacy Teaser Excerpt

Menkar changed into his Star-centaur form easily, without fear – more than could be said for her.  Her skin hardened, turned black and shiny as an insect’s carapace.  She brought her hands up in front of her and stared at them.  They were not flesh but something segmented and chitinous.  She stumbled back a few steps, the obsidian chest that was not her chest heaving.  Then it stopped as she stopped needing to breathe, at least in the normal way.  Something behind her brushed the wall.

Wings.

Feathered wings, black as a raven’s, folded against her back.  The wind plucked at them, rattling the feathers against each other like dry leaves.  Now that she was thinking about them they jerked.  But there wasn’t enough room for them to unfold inside the tent.  The edges crashed against the walls, the roof, and the shattered glass whirled out into the vortex.

The Mushroom

I’ve been getting ready to move into a new town (Twin Cities), which involves a lot of digging around in boxes of my things that I haven’t looked at in years.  That digging turned up this:

Cover of The Mushroom

Yep.  “The Mushroom” was the first short story I ever completed.  I was in the sixth grade at the time and I thought it would be cool to write a story about a mushroom that is actually a space alien.  Which prompted the following conversation when I saw this the other day.

Margaret from 2010:  WTF, Margaret from 1999?

Margaret from 1999:  I thought it was funny!

Margaret from 1999:  I like gel pens.

Anyway, here’s “The Mushroom,” for your viewing pleasure.

Continue reading →

Etsy!

You probably know by now that I cartoon, but I bet you’re not aware that artsiness runs in the family.  My mom is a jewelrymaker, and she has just opened the virtual doors of a new Etsy shop!  It’s going to have all sorts of jewelry in it, but it specializes in cute little stuff like these alien earrings:

Check out her stuff at http://www.etsy.com/shop/TaylorFamilyCreation.

Any Technology Sufficiently Advanced…

I was inspired to write this by a recent post on The Frailest Thing, a blog about the effects of emergent technology on society.  (By the way, I heartily recommend it – the guy’s brilliant.) Michael Sacasas’s point is that we are already cyborgs.  We can use our technology to do everything movie cyborgs can do.  It just happens to be more convenient – not to mention carrying less risk of infection – if the technology is not implanted.  And that got me to thinking about just how many real-world analogs there are to some of the magical things you find in fantasy stories.

  • Flight: check.
  • Ball of Fire: Given sufficient TNT, check.
  • Summon:  Also known as a pager.
  • Artificial Hearts:  Also known as artificial hearts.  They don’t make you turn evil, though.
  • Crystal Balls:  Modern surveillance and communication technology can do pretty much everything crystal balls could.
  • True Name:  Your Social Security number comes pretty close.
  • Monsters:  Too many to count, unfortunately.

Now I’d like to convince you that horcruxes are real, sort of.  So, I’ve got this laptop.  I put all my stuff on it.  Photos, music, recipes, manuscripts, lists of stuff I want to remember, letters from friends.  I use it to work.  I use it to play.  Whenever I can’t recall something with my real brain, I just dip into Wikipedia.  I’m on it right now.  The keyboard interface is so familiar that I don’t even think about it anymore – it’s like there is no boundary between my thoughts and the data.  I always know exactly where this laptop is and I take it everywhere.  I guard it more jealously than any other possession I have.  Is this starting to remind you of something?

What gets me concerned is how much of me is inside that thing.  Obviously, I’ve backed up all my files (and so should you).  But imagine, just imagine, if that laptop were to get destroyed somehow and I was idiot enough not to back up.  …it would be bad.  Not like Bolvangar kid bad, but bad.  Conversely, if I died in an accident, my friends and family could recover a lot of my memories and personality by logging into the laptop.

I’m pretty sure other people feel this way about their electronic gadgets, too.  So now what?  Well, I can tell you, I’m going to keep storing that laptop in a safe place.  And if I ever happen to meet a lanky teenager with a scar on his forehead, I’ll make sure he never, ever wants to kill me.