No Chicken Vegan Pad Thai

I am not so very good at updating the blog these days.  I'm sorry!  Things are insane - but mostly good insane.  I mean, my bachelorette weekend was last weekend, and Mark and I close on our new house in 2 days, and my shower is this weekend!  Add to that the fact that I (obviously) have a cold, and the blog has unfortunately been the last thing on my mind.

However, since I have about 15 minutes before I run off for an eye appointment, it was time to get back in business.  And I was super excited to share this recipe with the whole world.  It was a delicious pad thai, absolutely flavorful and healthy and yes, it was vegan but yet it had chicken.  What?!  How can this be!?  The answer, my friends, is called grain meat chicken.  AKA fake chicken.  AKA ficken (I totally made up this word but my family has been using it).

I wish I took notice of the type of ficken that I picked up at Wegman's, but I didn't.  I just know that it came in an orange-ish bag and they are in the freezer section (and in fact have to remain frozen).  I also know that this ficken was so darn realistic that it made me almost not like it (the texture of chicken freaks me out).  I sort of neglected to mention that it wasn't real chicken; Nick was smart enough to know that I didn't suddenly start feeding them all real meat, and called me out on it right away - but that didn't stop him from eating three helpings of pad thai, ficken and all!!!  And my mom didn't know it was fake chicken until I told her.  Then she claimed she knew it wasn't "very flavorful chicken" but I have a feeling she had no idea whatsoever :)  Unfortunately, Mark refused to even try it.  Sometimes he is oh so good about trying new things, and other times he just puts the brakes right on.  So I have no comment from Mark.  But everyone else was very surprised at just how realistic this grain meat chicken was.  It had the texture of cooked chicken - how, I have no idea.  When it's defrosting, it is pretty slimy, but as soon as you heat it up, it transforms into ficken.  I can't explain how, but it's magical.

I haven't been able to find this fake chicken in regular grocery stores, but I really hope I do, because I think this is a pretty exciting way to make everyone (minus Mark) excited for dinner!

Now, the bad news..... the recipe that I used to make this delicious no chicken pad thai has disappeared.  It used to be on a website called produceonparade.com.  I have searched and searched for this vegan blog, but it's gone.  And no amateur bloggers took it upon themselves to post the recipe, unfortunately.  So I don't have it for you.  But I am going to try to find it to update this post, because everyone has to try this recipe.  For now, just consider the post to be a review of grain-meat chicken :)