Costa Mesa, CA -- A vegetarian chef is cooking up a mess of "seitanic" vittles at her Southern California restaurants for Halloween.

Seitan isn't the ruler of the underworld, it's a wheat protein which has the texture of thinly sliced beef and it's a mainstay in chef Tanya Petrovna's cooking and her book "The Native Foods Restaurant Cookbook" (Shambhala Publications).

Petrovna uses the stuff because it has the same texture and taste as meat, which she says is important to satisfy the tastebuds of meat-eaters-turned-vegetarians.

Her Native Foods restaurants will be preparing devilish dishes for Halloween using seitan in foods like "Vampire Blood Soup," "Transylvanian Ghoulish."

So while seitan isn't inherently evil, it can lead to misunderstandings.

Petrovna says one woman asked her what the wheat protein was, and when she learned it was seitan she replied, "I believe in Jesus Christ," and stomped away.

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