Pot pie

I bough a whole butternut pumpkin the other day (it's only a small one) because they were 99c a kilogram. And since my pumpkin plants were eaten alive by powdery mildew, I figured I'd start buying them again. So I had to find a recipe! I also have 3kg of potatoes ($2 a bag!) so I wanted one that had both. So I decided to cook this:

Celebration Pot Pie with Pumpkin from fatfree vegan kitchen. I know I make a lot of stuff from there, but most of it so far has been delicious, easy to make with basic ingredients, and there's just so much on the one page :)

The only problem I had with this recipe was the amount of sodium! Holy crap 986.1mg sodium per serving! According to this website (I just ran a search on google.com) the RDI of sodium is 920 to 2300mg per day. I suppose for all your other meals and snacks of the day you could just not have salt, but salt is in pretty much everything.

So I think I cut the salt about in half by skipping a few things I just didn't have, and not adding the actual salt in the recipe in.

It was quite tasty, in the way stews are (meaning a little bit bland) so I just dripped some hot chilli sauce on top. It could go with a bit more garlic (maybe incorporate more into the biscuits).

I also didn't have any seitan (I've never used/made it before) as I have no idea where to find vital wheat gluten. Maybe health food stores like Mrs. Flannery's, but generally places like that are regular haunts for me and I haven't come across it yet. Not that I've looked :) But I do on occasion buy fake meat products like Lamyong TVP Chunks which is what I put in this. The texture is a little odd (I wouldn't recommend feeding it to an omnivorous friend or relative) but as a vegan expecting strange texture they are perfectly fine. I've also tried the Beef strips by lamyong too and they are probably better than the chunks, but really do NOT freeze well. I had them in a stir fry and they were fine but I froze the leftovers and had it the next day and I couldn't chew through them. So avoid freezing :) This TVP stuff is quite expensive ($4-$6 or thereabouts a packet) but I buy it rarely so I think that's fine. They tend to last a while because I use them in conjunction with tofu and other veges, so I can get 10 servings out of a packet meant for 4, for example.

My 'biscuits' (more like cakes) didn't really turn out how they were meant to but they were fine to me anyway. They were quite crispy on the outside and soft and cakey on the inside.