Tag: vegan brunch

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Food Blog Vegan MoFo

#VeganMoFo Day 29: A Recent Brunch

I make a “special” breakfast most Saturdays. Sometimes it’s waffles or pancakes, which only I like, but sometimes it’s savory, which K will usually eat too. There’s often toast, or roasted potatoes, but recently I made brunch with polenta.

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Or, okay, maybe it counts as grits? This is not my culture; I don’t know. Anyway, it’s polenta cooked with some fresh corn kernels for extra yum (also, using stuff up). Over that we’ve got tempeh cooked with spices, soy sauce, and liquid smoke, then smashed and browned a little with olive oil; collard greens, onion, garlic, and bell pepper got cooked down in the same pan. On the side, sliced tomato. Keeping it simple.

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Food Blog Vegan MoFo

#VeganMoFo Day 28: For Brunch, I’d Rather Be In Mendocino

I’m having a hard time right now, in life. I frequently daydream about things I’d like to be doing with time and money I don’t have. A common imaginary trip? Mendocino, California–particularly the Stanford Inn. I’ve had the pleasure of visiting it a few times now, and it is my happy place. Cozy rooms. Beautiful scenery. Charming town. Relaxing amenities. And, oh, the food. Vegan everything, especially the breakfasts.

While I can’t make it up to Mendocino right now, I can try to recreate one of their signature breakfasts: Grilled polenta, braised greens, and cashew sauce. Plus a side of tempeh.

For the tempeh and greens, I made a quick marinade with lemon juice, soy sauce, garlic, and a splash of liquid smoke, diluted a bit with water. I used half in a pan with shredded cabbage and baby spinach (what I had on hand) and the other half in a skillet with sliced tempeh and a few shakes of red pepper flakes. Cashew sauce was based on the “savory” recipe from The Kitchn. And the polenta I cooked ahead of time, then poured into a square baking pan to cool and solidify into something I could slice and pan-fry. (It was not perfect, though. Damn slices didn’t brown well and broke up when I flipped ‘em. Oh well. Next time, I’ll leave it to the professionals.)

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Food Blog

Sweet potato hash and tempeh bacon

I needed a hearty breakfast today. I was meeting up with friends for a hike, and I opted to let my favorite pre-hike brunches of the past inspire me: breakfast at Ravens in Mendocino. So I made a simple sweet potato hash with spring onions, green garlic, and red bell pepper, with a little arugula wilted in at the end for good measure. But protein was also required, so I marinated thick strips of tempeh in a thin broth with apple cider vinegar, soy sauce, minced garlic, tomato puree, hot sauce, liquid smoke, and a tiny bit of coconut nectar, then pan-fried them. A little of the marinade was drizzled over the hash to help the arugula wilt (and add flavor); more was added to the pan with the tempeh after one flip and allowed to cook all the way down, to better infuse the flavors.

The hike was worth it.

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Food Blog

French toast with homemade sourdough

Oh man oh man oh man. I’ve been meaning to make vegan french toast forever, but it never seemed to work out. Now I have homemade sourdough bread–more than I can reasonably eat on its own–plus a handful of Tomatero’s first strawberries of the spring. IT’S TIME.

For the batter, I more or less followed this recipe, but I just threw the raw ingredients (whole almonds, whole flax seeds, water, and all) into the Vitamix to blend it smooth. Perfect.

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Food Blog

Chickpea omelet with veggies

I always like to try new things, so this morning I opted to go a different route for the semi-traditional fancy Saturday breakfast: the chickpea omelet (Vegan Richa’s recipe). Her recipe suggest this is cooked similar to an uttapam; I can see it, but I went a different way with the veggies and the flavors. I skipped the cumin in the batter and added nutritional yeast; for veggies cooked into the pancake I went with shallots, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, and shredded carrot. Then I had these beautiful asparagus to use up (somehow I didn’t plan a menu around asparagus this week; clearly I am failing in my duties) so I tossed six of them in a pan with olive oil and a pinch of salt and let them go a bit greener before taking it off the heat and splashing with balsamic vinegar. I piled them on top of the omelet and sprinkled with fresh dill for Saturday Fancy flourish.

This was pretty good, though the boyfriend said he could “sometimes” taste the chickpea flour in an off-putting way (I am pretty sure I mixed it fine, but it may have cooked unevenly, especially that first one, so you’d get that raw flour taste) and might taste better thinner and more crepe-like. Something to consider for next time, I suppose. For mine, I enjoyed the crunchy exterior and fluffy interior a lot.

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Traditional Christmas brunch in the Cannon house: vegan sticky buns, pineapple, vegan Italian sausage, coffee. Yum. Happy Holidays!

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Carrot cake pancakes with walnuts, topped with Kite Hill cream cheese and maple syrup

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Baby kale and mushrooms, roasted tempeh cubes, hash browns, sliced tomatoes, coffee

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Food Blog

I’ve been remiss in my food blogging non-duties. Sometimes I post my dinners on Facebook, but I haven’t been good about taking photos. Does it matter to anyone? eh.

Well, I’d like to get back into it, since Vegan MoFo 2015 is approaching. Today is Saturday, so I made breakfast. I love savory breakfast, but it’s too much work for an average weekday. This wasn’t anything super special, but a “use up all the good stuff in the fridge” undertaking. I’ve been making the Isa Does It chickpea scramble a lot lately (it is amazing and if you haven’t made it yet DO SO NOW), but my dill already went south and I don’t have any bread for toast, plus I live in fear that boyfriend’s tastes will change/get bored, so I gotta go my own way once in a while, right?

I had: four odd-shaped purple potatoes, one ear of bi-color corn, one perfect heirloom tomato, avocado, serrano peppers, basil, onions, garlic, and a lime.

So I made: purple potato hash with tempeh, onion, serrano pepper, and garlic (+ a sprinkling of soy sauce, nutritional yeast, and oregano for good measure), and a corn salad topper with tomato, avocado, and basil with lime juice.

PRETTY GOOD.

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Food Blog

Red wine-almond cheese reduction over roasted brussels sprouts, russet potatoes, and homemade snausages

Sauce was a healthy pour of red wine, three dollops of fresh almond milk cheese (Kite HIll), three cloves of garlic, a pinch of thyme, and a sprinkle of red pepper flakes pureed in the VitaMix, then simmered down with a scoop of Earth Balance, and finished with a splash of soy sauce and balsamic vinegar.

Snausages are Italian sausage-style from Vegan Brunch.

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Food Blog None Vegan MoFo

When I don’t have it in me to make a more complicated savory breakfast and I don’t feel like pancakes (as sacrilegious as that may sound), the Swiss chard tofu frittata from Vegan Brunch is a go-to. Comes together super fast and bakes up in 20 minutes. Also makes a good weeknight dinner in a pinch, with salad and bread.

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Food Blog None Vegan MoFo

Because I didn’t cook at all on Friday, this is my Saturday breakfast. Pan-roasted fingerling potatoes, scrambled tempeh and kale, heirloom tomatoes and avocado. Yum.