Peasant Pie

I love grocery shopping!  When my husband and I are grocery shopping at our place of choice in Madison-- Woodman's market, which has a huge selection of everything under the sun-- we play a game called the "dollar game."  We try to find a food item that's weird, or unique that we have never tried before that is priced at $1 or less.  Last time, I found a can of seasoned seitan (wheat gluten protein) in the Asian food aisle.  I didn't know what I was going to use it for, but I could not resist.  Additionally, I bought a small box of Bisquick at our latest trip to the grocery store, just because I remember my mother using it when I was a kid... little did I know, I'd end up using my canned seitan and Bisquick on the same night!

We're on our last food-leg in our apartment... we'll need to go grocery shopping soon.  Using what I had laying around the apartment, I managed to make this masterpiece tonight!  I love it when I can invent something on a whim that turns out just fabulous.  You could vary this in many, many ways.  Perhaps adding chopped carrots, and potatoes.  Maybe adding garbanzo beans instead of seitan.  So many veggie combinations would work.


Ingredients:
Stew
1 onion, chopped
4-5 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
8 oz mushrooms
~1/2 bag- Frozen corn
~1/2 bag- Frozen peas
~1/2 bag- Frozen broccoli (thawed, to minimize cooking time, see below)
1 cup- Green beans, trimmed and cut into 1.5 inch pieces
1 can seitan (If you are using seasoned canned variety, use liquid and all)
5-6 cups water (I didn't measure, I just added enough to have a 'stewy' texture)
5-6 Knorr veggie bullion cubes
1/2 tsp- red pepper flakes
1 tbsp thyme
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper to taste
corn starch to thicken

Dumplings
3 cups Bisquick
1 cup milk
(mix until forms a loose dough, in accordance to package instructions)

Directions:
Heat olive oil in dutch oven.  Add onions, and cook until transparent.  Add garlic, red pepper flakes, and bay leaves, and cook ~1 minute, until hot (to get hot, and to avoid burning). Add chopped mushrooms, and cook until they release their juices, and the liquid evaporates.  Add water, peas, corn, veggie bullion, salt and pepper, and thyme. Bring to a boil.  When boiling, add green beans and broccoli (added later to reduce cooking time and mushiness).  Thicken with corn starch.  Drop prepared Bisquick batter by the spoon full on top of the boiling stew.  Reduce heat to medium.  Cook uncovered for 10 minutes, and covered for 10 minutes.  Voila.