Category: native americans

Cooking Adventure: “Turkey” Seitan (A.K.A. Turkey Loaf)

On November 22, 2018 in North America, most of us celebrated Thanksgiving.  This is a feast day to commemorate 17th century European colonization.  As children we are told a big meal was served to celebrate the settlers successful preparation for the impending winter and Native Americans peacefully took part.  The Native Americans don’t feel this warmly about the day however.

This year, we bucked the trend and instead of making a turkey we chose to roast a leg of lamb and tried our hand at making a seitan “turkey.”  Of course we started out searching the internet and read a bunch of different recipes and selected this as a starting off point.  Sylvia Bass on her web site Cookie Chicka has a lot of nice photos to accompany her recipe so that you can follow along with confidence, and they helped.  Overall the recipe contains vital wheat gluten, beans, chick pea flour, nutritional yeast, vegetable bullion or “poultry flavored” bullion and spices.  Mix all ingredients and steam them in a foil tube for one hour and then bake for 30 min.  I did not have a large enough system to steam all the ingredients in one tube of foil so I did two and I didn’t have chick pea flour so I used the entire can of white beans.  

Turkey Loaf baking alongside our leg of lamb.
Turkey Loaf after baking

I found it to be a lengthy process but the results were pretty satisfying.  The Turkey Loaf sliced easily and was tender and had all of the flavors we expect for a traditional Thanksgiving meal.  I served it with mushroom gravy, mashed potatoes and broccoli; it was a satisfying meal.  I used ‘Herbs de Provence’ a blend of rosemary, thyme, marjoram, savory and oregano which made it taste a lot like stuffing (a seasoned casserole of bread cubes, carrots, onions and celery with lots of regional variations) which I was not serving so I went for it knowing it would make up for it’s absence.  

Turkey Loaf being sliced
Sliced Turkey Loaf

Leftovers…

So the reheated Turkey Loaf was just as delicious the following night.  It will allow you to get thin slices and would easily make a nice sandwich filling.  Here is a list of ideas for what to do with the remaining servings:

  • Mix in with scrambled eggs along with bell peppers. (see photo)
  • Grill thin slices and serve as sandwich filling.
  • Toast and serve as a salad topper. 
  • Add to pasta with tomato sauce.  
  • Cube and add to pizza toppings.

Here I browned small cubes in oil and used them in an omelette with bell peppers and onions and topped with cheese.  We all agreed that I could have added more browned Turkey Loaf because the flavor was welcome and served almost as a sausage stand in. 

I think that this seitan recipe would be easily adjusted to different flavor profiles like:

  • Italian sausage 
  • Gyro or Greek Seasonings
  • Fajita/Mexican

Please comment if you have other recipe ideas or seasoning suggestions.  

Thanks!

The Pirate Pieman

One Water, One People

My husband and I were honored to attend a dinner titled Toward a FutureLand: Ceremony To Honor the Land and Welcome the FutureBuilders hosted by the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College.  The Center brought together an astonishing collection of people from around the world who are engaged in global struggles for land, examining the commodities and consumption of space as well as the reach and watch of colonial and corporate power.  They welcomed conference participants and representatives from:

The conference theme, Toward a FutureLand (which I did not attend) facilitated discussions exploring land as essential to indigenous sovereignty, strength and nurturance.  It is these types of educational experiences that make Kalamazoo College award winning, and I am proud to be an alumni.

The dinner’s food dancing and music were provided three bands of the Potowatami Indians (Gun Lake Band, Nottawaseppi Band and the Pokagon Band.)

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Buffalo and Posole Stew with Salmon, green beans and salad.

It was especially nice for us to be able to meet the Tewa women from New Mexico because we lived in Santa Fe, NM for 12 years and we were happy to have lived and worked among many Pueblo Indians.

The dinner was a powerful combination of people and ideas that focused on the impact of colonialism and the ways that native people continue to be marginalized, most notably seen in the shocking pattern of missing native women in the US and Canada.

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Beautiful Jingle Dress Dancers

The event included a Water Ceremony, reminding us all that however far away each groups individual missions are, we are all joined by our shared need to protect our land and water.  This was made more personal highlighting how locally, the Kalamazoo River and more broadly the Great Lakes, are threatened by corporate agendas that put the movement and sales of oil ahead of the protection of our water.  Andrew DeGraw with Kalamazoo Remembers helped close the ceremony and shared some shocking information about Enbridge Energy’s behavior in our community even after being responsible for the second largest inland oil spill in U.S. history in July 2010.  According to Wikipedia the largest was the 1991 spill near Grand Rapids, Minnesota.

Most days I take it for granted that clean water will run out of my taps.  However, in Michigan it is becoming more and more clear that we can no longer assume corporations share our interest in protecting our water.  Between the Flint Water Crisis and our current concerns regarding PFAS chemicals in Parchment Michigan’s water it is clear something needs to change.

I encourage you to click on one or more of the links I have provided, once you have been made aware, you begin to change; just like you can not separate out each drop of water from the ocean.

Thanks

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Photo by Lukas on Pexels.com