Tag Archives: vegan
Recipe: Lazy Vegan Breakfast
Sometimes I wake up and want a hearty breakfast…but don’t want to pay to eat out. Or get dressed. Mostly the second thing. Well a few months ago I stumbled across a recipe for red potato and vegan chorizo hash and now it’s in my breakfast rotation about twice a month.
Generally I don’t make breakfast – too many delicious bakeries abound and I do love my carbs and coffee – so basically this is one of the only things I actually cook for breakfast.
Oh, and it’s vegan too! Vegan breakfast is wayyyyy difficult for me to find. I don’t like oatmeal or cereal, and almost all baked goods have butter and/or eggs in it. Eggs of all sorts are a cheap hot breakfast for most, too. Soy yogurt and fruit with coffee is my other usual breakfast.
If you want a hearty breakfast with leftovers for a few days, or have a bunch of weekend visitors to serve (vegan and non-vegan alike), then try this out! Even my “I only eat real meat” friends like this dish.
Recipe adapted from Veg News
- 1/4 c coconut oil
- 4 red potatoes, diced (any small potatoes will work)
- 1/2 white or yellow onion, diced
- dash of dried rosemary
- dash of cumin
- dash of coriander
- dash of crushed red pepper
- 12 oz vegan chorizo (I use Trader Joe’s soy chorizo – it’s priced better than anything I find at the regular market or Whole Foods)
- 8-12 small tortillas
- about 1/4 cup vegan cheese (optional)
Heat up coconut oil over medium heat; add potatoes, cover, and cook for 5-7 minutes.
Add onion, rosemary, coriander, and pepper. Stir and cook uncovered over medium-low heat for 5 minutes or until the onions are cooked through.
Lower heat and stir in soy chorizo; cook only until it is heated.
Next, heat up your tortillas real quick (10-15 seconds in the microwave will do) and shave some vegan cheese off the block (if you want and if you didn’t buy the preshredded kind).
To serve: heap some of that skillet-y goodness onto a tortilla and top with that soy cheese if you so please. Serve alongside some fruit juice and coffee and slowly let the morning unfold.
Now, if only I could find a good vegan scone recipe…my mornings would be complete!
Time, Money, and Food
Happy Monday blog friends! I have some happy business news to report: my fictitious business name papers have gone through! Yay! I’m beginning to really see the light at the end of the red-tape tunnel.
In the process of doing all this, I’ve lost a little bit of my focus on actually creating things — or rather, I just haven’t spent much time in production. In addition to the stresses of life (I seem to have more than the usual amount lately – boo) I’ve spent some time trying to stop being impatient (you can waste a lot of time agonizing over when some paperwork will go through) and just go with the flow. This is great sometimes, but not when you’re trying to hold down a full time job AND start a business on the side. Oh, and I took up a semi-vegan lifestyle, which has led to an endless amount of blog and recipe surfing — a huge, albeit enlightening, time suck.
I have gotten some great meals out of it though: in addition to the tofu lettuce wraps I made (twice) last week, I’ve found a recipe for amazingly delicious chewy vegan chocolate chip cookies (my vegan life is now complete), I found my new favorite vegan big breakfast recipe – potatoes and soyrizo, I found a way to make cold quinoa that I like (mostly I just cook and use it like rice), and I haven’t cooked with meat, eggs, or dairy in a couple of weeks.
I want to make these all. the. time.
The cookie recipe from Daily Garnish was a huge hit with my friends and co-workers -- even the ones who aren't keen on veganism -- and they even taste great right out of the freezer!
Oddly enough, I never really liked traditional chorizo, but I love soyrizo!
My latest internet time-suck? Methods of batch cooking and freezing meals. This idea seems to be really popular amongst the mom-blogging world — and for good reason, putting dinner on the table for 4+ people every day is a lot of work — but it can be adapted to any household size and diet. Basically you pick a day and all you do is cook and freeze meals…it’s quite the operation.
I’ve become interested in this for a few reasons: first, it would make it a lot easier to make a healthful food choice when I’m not in the mood to actually cook. Right now my go-to lazy meal is a big ol’ salad piled high with vegetables and a homemade dressing with flax seed meal mixed in…not necessarily a bad choice, but not necessarily something I want to eat three times a week. The other downside to this is I don’t have leftovers to take for lunch the next day (this lazy cook lives off of leftovers), which makes it tempting to just eat out…where it’s harder to make vegan food choices. This directly relates to another appealing point of batch cooking…the cost.
Case in point: there was a vegan option at this place, but I chose the raw tuna anyways. Oh and I spent $11 on this thing.
Eating out will ALWAYS be more expensive than cooking at home, it’s as simple as that! But I am trying not to give myself free reign at the grocery store, either — convenience foods, trying something new, and other impulse buys can add up. Eating whole, fresh foods can sometimes be less expensive and sometimes more expensive, but in general they are all perishable — stocking up on whatever is on sale (2 for 1 berries!) is difficult to do if you don’t start cooking and/or freezing them, because they will go bad and throwing food out sucks. I figure that if I can buy things that are on sale and make a bunch of it, I can save some money AND if I’m planning out meals better and have some pre-made meals in the freezer, I’ll avoid all of the unnecessary eating out. That way I can save my eating out budget for more meaningful things, like catching up with friends or celebrating a birthday.
Lastly, cooking ahead saves time. As I really start to ramp up the side business, I have a feeling I’ll find myself with less and less time to spend in the kitchen each evening. I’m okay with that, as long as I’m not eating food that makes me feel like crud.
I’ve never been much of a freeze-your-food fan – currently my freezer houses things like ice, bags of frozen fruits and veggies, ice cream, and “desperation meals” aka boxes of Lean Cuisines – so I’m planning to make a few recipes and freeze them and see how it goes! Maybe the freezer and I will become friends!
What’s your take on leftovers and freezing food? Do you live off of leftovers, or always crave new tastes and flavors? Do you have a different cost/time efficient way of making food? I’d love to hear about it!
Recipe: Vegan Tofu Lettuce Wraps
In college, my roommates loved going to PF Chang’s. They really loved the lettuce wraps, the mongolian beef, and the fried banana rolls, and once they introduced me to it there was no going back to a time where I didn’t know what lettuce wraps were. There was no PF Chang’s in Berkeley, so taking some time to drive outside the city limits and pretend that we weren’t starving college students was always rejuvenating!
The other day I saw some butter lettuce in the produce section of the grocery store, and I knew that I had to make some lettuce wraps – veganized, of course.
I wasn’t in the mood to totally cook up my own sauces and flavors, so I ended up with a recipe that is really easy to execute on a weeknight, or any other time you’re feeling like a crisp, flavorful dinner. The water chestnuts really give this the texture that I remember from my college days!
Adapted from this recipe. Vegan modifications made by me.
Ingredients
- 8 Boston Bibb or butter lettuce leaves (PF Chang’s uses iceberg but I find that it’s too rigid.)
- 1/2 package extra firm tofu
- 1 tablespoon cooking oil
- 1 cup mushrooms, chopped
- 1/2 cup soy ginger sauce (I used Whole Foods brand because I was feeling lazy, but you could make your own with soy sauce, garlic, ginger, and rice vinegar)
- 1/4 cup hoisin sauce
- 1 (8 ounce) can water chestnuts, drained and finely chopped
- 2 carrots, finely shredded or shaved
Directions
- Wrap tofu in an absorobent towel, then place on a plate and weigh down the top with another plate. We’re trying to squeeze the extra water out.
- Rinse whole head of lettuce and remove leaves individually. Pat eac one dry and set on a towel to soak up extra moisture – be careful not to tear them!
- Cube up the tofu into small pieces. I took the tofu and smashed it up a little to get it to resemble more of a “ground beef” look – this also helps it hold onto spices, etc better.
- In a skillet, heat up oil. Add mushrooms and tofu. (You could sub a chopped onion for the mushrooms if you wanted to.) Add soy-ginger sauce and stir. Stir in chopped water chestnuts. Let it all cook for a couple of minutes – some of the water from the tofu and chestnuts will cook out.
- Arrange lettuce leaves on plate/platter, and put the tofu mixture in a bowl. To serve, add the tofu mixture in the center of a leaf of lettuce like a taco. Add shredded carrots, and drizzle hoisin sauce over the top. Wrap the leaf around like a taco or burrito and enjoy!
Vegan Update #3
Favorite vegan thing: Cinnaholic cinammon rolls
Non-vegan thing I’m craving: Sour cream on everythingggg
Last restaurant I ate vegan in: Little Dehli (Indian food is almost vegan by default!)
It’s been two weeks since my last vegan update. I’d like to say that it’s because vegan eating has become an integral part of my life and I don’t have much to say about it anymore; but of course that isn’t true.
I keep finding myself “cheating” on more than one occasion. One day I forgot to make breakfast and decided to eat a cheese danish rather than pay twice as much for oatmeal at the coffee shop. (I might have done that two days in a row.) I’ll throw in some mayo because I didn’t have any vegan mayo, and pretty soon I feel like I’ve compromised the whole thing.
On my non-vegan days, I did not stick to my guns and eat balanced…and found myself popping some Tums. As a result, I no longer feel great…in fact, I kind of feel bloated and icky. Not fun.
In addition to this, I’ve made some vegan discoveries that aren’t exactly waistline-friendly. Don’t get me wrong — I’m so excited that there are people out there catering to the sweet tooth of vegans. I don’t know why the food marketplace has to be overwhelmingly terrible in this department! But like all sweets you gotta do everything in moderation.
Vegan cinnamon bun with peanut butter frosting and strawberries.
The cinnamon buns from Cinnaholic are really good by any dietary standard…seriously, SO yum. And everything they make is vegan! If you find yourself in Berkeley, check it out! There’s soy milk in a case by the counter in case you want something to wash it down with as well =)
The next day I had Bi-Rite chocolate coconut ice cream. I don’t like coconut at all so I was pretty skeptical, but after a couple of bites I didn’t even notice the coconut — I assume that coconut “milk” is the base which is why the flavor isn’t that strong, but the ice “cream” is vegan? I guess the main difference between this and regular ice cream is the melt factor — the vegan stuff melts pretty fast. I kind of liked the texture better because it wasn’t so hard — my teeth are kind of sensitive to cold.
Luckily, I’ve made some more healthful discoveries as well. I tried soy yogurt for the first time — and didn’t hate it. I never really loved traditional American yogurt but it definitely helps that this variety doesn’t make my stomach hurt…haha. I think that dairy products are going to be the most difficult thing for me to stop wanting though — I hate milk but looooove cheese, sour cream, cheesecake, etc.
More often than not I can convince myself that smothering something in cheese isn’t a good idea because it adds fat and cholesterol to my diet and has the potential to make my tummy hurt a little (oh yay mild lactose intolerance). I also remind myself that there are long-term health implications as well, but to be honest it’s hard to realize the potential impacts in that moment…why oh why is it so difficult to reconcile these things? At any rate, it’s really difficult to replicate the creamy taste and texture of diary, which is why it’s so difficult to give up!
Sick Day
Oh hey friends…excuse the fact that I haven’t gotten dressed yet today.
I’ve been in bed sick all day today. I got up for work but realized that I’m going to be completely useless there AND I would just be making myself even more sick/exhausted/unable to heal if I’m running around all day. It’s always tough for me to decide to try and do the right thing for my health and take a day off…I always feel like I’m letting someone down.
I thought I felt fine yesterday and was surprised when I woke up with a sore throat, headache, and the works…but in retrospect there have been warning signs. I have been suuuuuuuuper low energy and sleepy at work the past two days; I’ve had more achy muscles than usual; due to those two things I scrapped two runs this week; last night I couldn’t keep my eyes open past 5:15pm; and I’m sure the stress in my life is affecting my immune system as well.
Boo.
Today is supposed to be a “vegan eating” day for me and I’m not sure what else I’m gonna nourish myself with today. I have had a ton of green tea and lemon and I made some soup using a vegetable-based broth (it actually tasted really good). But now I want some honey in my tea and some jell-o…hmmm.
On the plus side….apparently Ritz crackers are “accidentally” vegan! I’d totally been avoiding the box in the back of my pantry because I assumed they were full of butter. Now I know what I’m snacking on while wishing that my eyes would just pop out to make room for all the crap clogging up my sinuses!
April in Instagrams
I cannot believe that it is already MAY!!! Insane.
- I had some good food with a friend who wears rad t-shirts.
- I also had some good brews with more good friends at the Nikkei Student Union 10th anniversary event in Berkeley.
- I slept through the day for almost half of this month…when you add it up, I worked 6 overnighters and spent an additional 7 days recovering.
- Luckily I didn’t forget what the sunrise looks like.
- I spent a considerable amount of time waiting for trains to pull up to the platform. (It was also Earth Day in April – which reminded me that transit is annoying but I am also living up to one of my idealistic goals that I set in college – to support public transit whenever possible.)
- I also spent some time above ground – running along the embarcadero – which offered some great views.
- I tried to work out some more. Key word: tried.
- I went shoe shopping and had a difficult time deciding between these two shoes. (First world problems.)
- I started shopping for Mother’s Day (right around the corner!)
- I also took in some new sights in the Financial District.
- I also took up being a part-time vegan! (Food from Juicy Lucy’s.)
- Some vegan days were more desperate than others. (Almonds, dried apricots, and Rockstar are all vegan!)
All in all, I really can’t believe the month is already over. It went by faster than I realized, probably because I spent over a week sleeping during the day! April brought a good round of great weather AND my vitamin D treatment seems to be working now, so I experienced a lot less chronic fatigue this month (YAY!).
I found out that my older cousin (on my dad’s side) and my younger cousin (on my mom’s side) share an April birthday – I cannot believe that the younger cousin turned 18. His mama is my mom’s youngest sister, so she was the “cool young aunt” when I was growing up…this officially makes me feel old!
I also cleared a business-y hurdle (business registration) and plan to tackle a few more in the coming month. I spent some time discussing how ridiculous it all is with a friend who owns his own business in San Francisco.
In terms of my blog, Paper Gatti sponsored its first blog (dianapantz!) and through that Paper Gatti had its first giveaway (it’s open through tomorrow!! go enter it now! I’m giving away stuff before my shop is even open!). I also saw traffic go WAY up in response to my DIY canvas tutorial – exciting! I also completed another DIY project – a tshirt scarf – and completed a couple more afterwards as gifts.
May promises some fun times at a Giant’s game, and I have some fun times with friends lined up. Cinco de Mayo is coming up, as well as Bay To Breakers – both events bring some extra fun to the city. And don’t forget…mother’s day is in May as well!
Vegan Update: Moderation
- Favorite vegan thing: Soyrizo burrito from Papalote
- Non-vegan thing I’m craving: cookies (I need an easy egg-less go-to cookie recipe. Just sayin’.)
- Last restaurant I ate vegan in: Urban Picnic (down the street from where I work!)
When I took on this half-time vegan experiment, I didn’t really set any major goals or think a whole lot about it, to be honest…my main goal was simply to stop eating so much crap (or, more whole grains and vegetables) without ruining my life (aka no calorie counting/portion restrictions).
There is also a fun element (for now) in that I get to be more creative with what I cook. I’ve made vegan donuts, strawberry basil syrup, cooked beets for the first time ever…there’s been some failed experiments as well (frozen chopped spinach does NOT substitute for sauteed fresh spinach as a side dish and vegan cheese, while useful, does not taste like cheese). Luckily I always have my fallback on hand: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised that some of the places I frequent on occasion are vegan friendly. Papalote (of Throwdown with Bobby Flay fame) is down the street from my house and makes a soyrizo vegan burrito. On Friday I was spent and felt that I needed something that wasn’t green and whole grain and this definitely hit the spot…but without cholesterol or ensuing heart burn of a traditional burrito.
om nom nom.
In addition to disappearing heart burn, I’ve generally noticed no decrease in energy when I eat vegan…perhaps even the opposite. I’m not climbing mountains now or anything, but realizing that eating the salad I already prepared will actually make me FEEL better than beef tacos makes it so much easier to make the right choice.
Does that sound kind of lame or “well duh” to you? Apparently I have to learn things the hard way.
On the flip side…in the past few days, I realized that I was lacking in dinner inspiration. Due to the stresses of my life, I’m in a no-effort dinner phase. Even when I do make something, whatever I whip up for dinner is not very satisfying. If you have something that you LOVE to make for dinner because it is tasty and easy (that can be made vegan)…please send it my way!
While I don’t really feel deprived of anything, the fact that I can’t consistently come up with my own meals tells me that I am not ready to become a full-time vegan eater. It will take a long time to get there, if I ever do at all. Moderation is, once again, the name of the game. If I woke up tomorrow and said I was giving up meat, I would of course obsess over it and want to have it all the time! (Tell me I can’t have something I like, and I’ll think about it and eventually justify it and then I’ll feel guilty about it later. Not a good cycle.)
I’m having fun researching vegan ideas and recipes…it’s a good internet pastime! A lot of the vegan diet books that I looked into referenced various aspects of The China Diet, so I put a hold on it at the library…it took less than a week for a copy to become available, so I’m now reading it. I won’t go on about the book because I haven’t finished it yet, but it is very interesting to say the least. The “never stop learning” nerd in me loves it.
Lastly…through no conscious efforts I’ve also lost a couple of pounds…This un-anticipated benefit is also motivating, without all of the guilt of a normal calorie-restrictive diet (mama’s gotta have her carbs and chocolate.)….
Well that’s pretty much what I’ve noticed and learned in my second week of being a part-time vegan. Taking control of my health and what I eat are not easy, but definitely worthwhile.
Hot and Fuzzy
San Francisco just had its first day of summer…so we have about 4 days left in the year of “summer” weather. Ha ha. It was in the 80s on Saturday and I had the day off! I had big plans to hit up Cal Day at UC Berkeley or the Cherry Blossom Festival (again) but I opted not to attend either one…what can I say, I’m kind of crowd-averse.
I did hit up the Noe Valley Farmer’s Market, where I picked up $14 in produce. Everything sold at NVFM is certified organic, in case you’re into that sort of thing. I also hit up Valencia Farmer’s Market (a real grocery, not a farmer’s market…confusing I know) and picked up some organic strawberries (Driscoll, in case you are wondering Dad) and a loaf of bread.
After my farmer’s market excursion I headed to the library to pick up a book that I had on hold and then high-tailed it home…you see, I was TOTALLY BEAT from the hot weather! I was also mildly disturbed by what the people of San Francisco consider “okay to wear in public” when the heat kicks up a notch. I remember when I lived in Berkeley and I’d come to SF and I felt like San Franciscans were a little more “polished” and “chic”…umm apparently that ONLY applies to the kinds of coats and boots we wear.
So anyways. I just HAD to make something yummyin my kitchen, and the hot weather had me wanting something cool and refreshing….at first I was going to try out this recipe for strawberry-basil margaritas, but I didn’t have any tequila and I wanted something that was going to keep longer, so I made syrup for strawberry-basil sodas instead!!
I followed this recipe over at The Kitchn to make the syrup. (Apologies — I forgot to take photos of the actual process so I just have pics of the ingredients.)
After I made the syrup (took me a while — I don’t have a juicer and my only sieve is super fine mesh so it took a while to remove all the seeds!) I mixed it in with some fruit and carbonated water.
Obviously when it's hot I give up on caring what my hair/makeup does.
I use a SodaStream machine to make carbonated water. I picked it up at the Play Green festival in SF two years ago. I always hated carrying bottles of water home from the store on the train. Bottled water is also not very good for the environment, and as much as idealistically I wasn’t really a fan of using water bottles, in reality the thing that really got me to stop buying bottled was the fact that water is so darn HEAVY!
Anyways, here is the result. I couldn’t get any good light so the color is a little bit off. Thankfully the taste wasn’t!
I’ve been drinking sparkling water since I was a kid….my mom calls it “fuzzy water”. Another one of my friends calls it “glitter water”. When I lived in Italy, “acqua frizzante” was on every table in every restaurant…I loved it. Living in a city without a car, I didn’t love schlepping my water around, especially when the tap water in SF is really good and costs next to nothing!
Now I have adopted sparkling water as my drink of choice….it’s fizzy like soda but without all the extra crap. (I do love me a Coca-Cola with ice…but the sugary feeling in my mouth afterwards that I get isn’t my fave so I never buy it to consume at home — I leave it as a restaurant treat.) People sometimes think I’m a little snooty for drinking sparkling water, but I’ve learned to ignore what most people say about what you eat — it’s YOUR body and YOU have to deal with any and all consequences of what you put into it.
I also found that the soda syrup was WAY too delicious NOT to eat by itself…so for dessert I made some biscuits, spread some vegan butter on them, and used the syrup as “jam”.
Yum! What’s your favorite hot weather refresher?
Vegan Update: Restuarants and Donuts
Part-time VEGAN Update
- Favorite vegan thing I’ve recently had: Olive bread from Acme Bread Co.
- Most surprising vegan thing I’ve recently had: Sour Patch Kids (!!! Vegan. Still not healthy. I know.)
- Non-vegan thing I’ve been craving: FROZEN YOGURT. Zomgahhhhh. Someone buy me an ice cream maker (and while you are at it, a food processor, which is probably more practical/versatile.)
- Last restaurant I ate a vegan meal in: Fattoush
Oh Hey friends — I mentioned last week that I’m trying out this whole 3-day-a-week-vegan thing. I’ve already had some interesting encounters.
Someone I ate out with is convinced that I can’t eat in a restaurant. “Are you SURE you can eat here? Why don’t we just go to Whole Foods and get something?” First off…you can successfully shop at Safeway if you are vegan. (Although I think their quinoa is OUTRAGEOUSLY priced, which is not a vegan-only objection.) Secondly…please calm down I am sure I can have SOMETHING. We were at a place that does brunch and Mediterranean food, so I figured I had a good shot of finding something on the menu that wasn’t fruit bowls and oatmeal.
As it turns out, brunch menus are pretty heavy on the eggs. And when they aren’t, there’s meat. And usually one or both of those things are accompanied by (my most favorite condiment in the world) cheese.
A lot of things could be modified in your own kitchen to be vegan (soyrizo, french toast w/o eggs, etc), but at a restaurant you don’t have that luxury.
But the middle-eastern/mediterannean side of the menu didn’t disappoint. (In my experience this type of cuisine usually has vegetarian options and they aren’t really big on eggs or yogurt cause tahini sauce and lemon are more popular options. It’s also more spice-heavy and cheese-less then say…Italian food.) The vegetarian wrap was DELISH. It had grilled cauliflower and egglants, lettuce, a ton of vinegar-soaked veggies and a nice lemon-y sauce. It was accompanied by potatoes (in retrospect the vegan-ness is questionable, I didn’t ask what kind of grease they were made in…but I am going to make a good faith guess and say it was vegetable oil) and a bit of salad. It was really tasty.
Would I have ordered something like that if I wasn’t “having a vegan day”? Probably not.
So I guess this whole experiment may just change my life for the better. Cause they also had FRENCH TOAST and over a dozen OMLETTES on the menu. I was totally eyeing them and thinking how amazing some french toast with powdered sugar and maple syrup would be, and how amazing some greasy corned beef hash would taste in my potatoes.
That’s always my problem: when ordering food, I don’t remember that grease and sugar will probably make me feel “bleh” after eating.
This isn’t to say that I didn’t indulge in some other non-vegetable things over the weekend.
On Friday night, I attempted to make chocolate-avocado vegan donuts. And they actually tasted pretty good.
Warm chocolate avocado vegan donuts don’t taste like Happy Donuts (the 24-hour donut shop down the street). They just don’t. And let’s be real: I don’t need to be able to make something as delicious and unnecessary as Happy Donuts in my kitchen. HOWEVER if you let the warm donuts cool, they taste pretty good. Not 100% donut-y, but definitely something that hits my undying need for chocolate and carbs.
Patience is a virtue that I may one day learn.
In the mean time, I’ve gone a little bit research-heavy and come up with a ZILLION vegan recipes I want to try. I also found some restaurants I want to try out in SF that have good vegan dishes. In a city that is as food-centric as this one, I use food and restaurants as the main destination for my explorations!
Breakfast – Vegan Peanut Butter-Stuffed French Toast
Apologies for the afternoon update, morning readers! You’ll have to pardon me…I forgot to hit “publish” when I got home from work at 5:30am this morning. I’m working night shifts all week…it makes me a little wonky.
Mmm, breakfast. Some of my favorite breakfast foods include fried eggs, hash browns, and bacon. Oh man, I LOVE hash browns. I want some right now! (And, fun fact, I don’t like cereal.) But when I want a truly decadent breakfast treat, I’m all about the french toast.
There are two brunch places just blocks from my house that are known for their french toasts — one of them does croissant french toast, and the other does cornflake-encrusted french toast. Quite frankly, I think the corn flakes are a little bit much, but I won’t refuse a plate of them if you put them in front of me. The problem with both of these places is that I have to get dressed and look presentable, which isn’t happening this week.
On Monday I mentioned that I hadn’t really tried out any of the recipes in Diana’s 3 day a week vegan e-book because I didn’t want to go out and buy anything at the store…but as it turns out I had everything lying around to make her peanut butter-stuffed french toast. When I woke up (at noon) yesterday, I had to have me some!
After I broadcasted this on the internet, some of my friends over on Twitter asked for photos, so I thought I’d share my pictures with you all (be forewarned that you are going to be disappointed on the picture front, but not in the tastiness department!)
This recipe has also been published over at Azia Said What, so you can try it out yourself before deciding whether or not to buy the e-book.
(I know that it is difficult to tell, but I do eat fruits and veggies on occasion as well. I’ll share some of that with you…just not today!)
One note: I used this blueberry streusel bread that I got at Target. The label said that it contained milk products (butter is what is holding the “streusel” topping together) in it, so this rendition isn’t technically 100% vegan. It was kind of the only bread I had in the house though. And it was raining, so I wasn’t about to go down to the bakery. Also, the blueberries INSIDE the bread made it unnecessary to use my own berries on top!
Two note: I kind of let the bread soak in the soymilk/vanilla/cinnamon mix for wayyyy too long (like five minutes), so it was extra loaded with moisture, so I did 20 minutes on each side instead of 10 each side. Due to the extra soggy-ness, it took some finesse to flip it over.
Three note: I had agave syrup in my pantry, but since I don’t really like syrup I decided not to use any on the toast after all. This thing was plenty sweet on its own.
MMM blue berry streusal goodness
All the other ingredients I used...now you know I'm super cheap when it comes to buying staples like peanut butter and vanilla.
Just make a peanut butter sandwich...
Soak it in some goodness...and throw it in the oven!
I went to take a photo of the final product and my camera battery died (now I know what the low battery meter looks like!) so I have no photos of delicious finished french toast. (This is what I meant by disappointment.)
But trust me when I say, it was REALLY good. Kind of like the best warm peanut butter sandwich you’ve ever had, but better because it also had blueberries in it and tasted of vanilla and cinnamon.
I love that I already had everything I needed to make this in my pantry. No “I’m only gonna use this once” ingredients! And the prep/cleanup was super easy. Yesssssssssss.
Proof that vegan diets contain delicious breakfast foods too!
