Karen finally gets to eat some beef!! Well, sorta,,,,

This post will probably be tedious to those who have not seen the chick flick "Julie/Julia"...in the movie, the modern Julie makes Julia Child's Beef Á La Bourguignonne. Really, it's just a fancy beef stew - takes hours to make.

I'll show you my finished product:



Yum, looks like real beef stew - but, of course, it's not! My allergy makes it impossible for me to eat the real thing. A couple of days ago, my sis showed a process to "vegan-ize" the stew....works perfect for me!

Now I'll show you what all I did. (I would have never come up with this myself...I followed my sis's steps, thanks!)

Gathered the ingredients. The only odd things in the stew were Tofu and Vital Wheat Gluten. Oh, and nutritional yeast. All readily available at Whole Foods.




Blended up the tofu, various spices and sauces. Oh - it contains Beef Bouillon - the Food Lion brand - amazingly - has NO beef whatsoever!!


Added the vital wheat gluten (like a flour).



Kneaded it into a stiff dough.



After letting it "rest" for a while, I cut it into chunks (to resemble the "beef")



Saute some onions and carrots....



Dump it all together with some Red, Red, Red Wine! and more bouillon. Bake for a couple of hours until the wine is mostly absorbed and the remaining sauce is thick.




Meanwhile saute some pearl onions in more beef bouillon....gotta add that beef flavor!


Add some mushrooms....


Same photo again....all of it mixed together and baked a little more....yum. It really was good!!


And then - more excitement....Robert called and said that Ray, his bud and room-mate's car had broken down in Raleigh. So....they used our tow-dolly to pull his car back home for repairs. They stuck it in the hangar to await the weekend when they have time.


But they were hungry - so I invited them to sample some of the stew.


They ate a good bit of it - either they liked it or they were just being nice!!!