First of all, thanks WordPress for putting me on the Freshly Pressed page! I checked my blog this afternoon was astounded by how many people viewed my blog and commented! I really do appreciate every comment 
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Wishbone says, “Maybe I should write a blog.”
As Wishbone pawed away at the computer trying to start her blog, she suddenly felt very sleepy.
::yawn:: “I need a doggie nap!”
Wishbone dreamed that she was the king of the yard.
Wishbone says, “King in the Castle, King in the Castle, I have a chair! Go do dis, go do dis, King in the Castle!”
Then she woke up.
Wishbone says, “Damn, it was all a dream!”
Anyways, doggie antics aside, last night Dave and I were craving the vegan gyro from The Chicago Diner. But, I didn’t want to travel all the way to Lincoln Park, thus we decided to issue ourselves a gyro challenge. We wanted to see if we could make our own gyros for half the cost of what it would be, had we gone to the diner.
A gyro at The Chicago Diner costs $8.99 + tax, tip and parking. For two people, the estimated cost would be about $8.99 (cost of 1 gyro) x 2 (people) x 1.10 (tax) x 1.20 (20% tip) + $2.50 (street parking for 2 hours) = about $26.23
Last night we spent about $10.74 for enough ingredients to make SIX gyros. Granted we already had onions, cucumbers, and tomatoes, you can still clearly see the savings.
[$3.69 (package of seitan) + $1.99 (whole wheat pita) + $1.29 (whole head of lettuce) + $2.79 (soy yogurt)] x 1.10 (tax) =about $10.74
Don’t get me wrong, I love going out to eat, especially to vegan friendly places, but sometimes, you really have to see if it’s worth it and take into mind any additional costs you might incur in addition to paying for food and services. In my case, driving to Lincoln Park during rush hour and having to find street parking was not worth it.
Anyways I followed this recipe. Since I’ve only made the gyros once, I don’t feel comfortable putting up my own version of the recipe just yet. However, if you want to try to make this dish, the recipe I linked is very easy to follow.
The only problem I had with making the dish, didn’t really have anything to do with the recipe itself, but with the seitan I used.
I used Upton’s Naturals Traditional Seitan
The store bought seitan was a little too dry for my liking. My mom knows how to make seitan so I’ll have to bug her for the recipe; however she calls it 面筋 (mianjin).
Anyways, I took some pictures of my gyro making experience. Here I am making the Tzatziki sauce.
Can you guess what that blob is?
The recipe called for grated cucumber that was strained. I used a cheese cloth to strain the cucumber because I found it a lot easier to use and more effective than a strainer. I was able to squeeze a loooooot of liquid out of the cucumber. I also tried to drink the cucumber juice and it was very bitter tasting. I was surprised because I’ve juiced cucumbers before in my Juiceman but I guess the bitterness was masked by other fruits.
The recipe also called for soy yogurt; I used Silk Live! Soy Yogurt.
It was the first time I’ve tried soy yogurt and it’s actually pretty good. It’s very tangy and reminded me of keifer and European Style yogurt. The consistency was like regular yogurt and had a flowery after taste. I would definitely buy it again but I don’t think it’s a yogurt that everyone would like.
Here is my finished sauce:
It was very delicious but just a tad too sweet for my liking. The recipe called for 1 tsp of turbinado sugar, so next time I’ll just use a 1/2 tsp.
The seitan cooked pretty quickly and soon it was gyro assembly time!
The sauce “glues” everything together so that you don’t make as big of a mess eating the gyro.
The final product:
It smelled so delicious!
Yum yum!
I’d say that overall, our gyro experiment went very well. It’s not as good as the gyro from The Chicago Diner but it will get there one day!
