Breakfasts....

Breakfast has always been my favourite meal. Before going vegan, visiting my local diner for breakfast was a common activity—at any time of day or night. As a vegetarian, breakfast out was still easy, but eschewing all animal products makes restaurants a bit trickier, especially for morning meals. Visits to the diner meant a side of home fries with butter-free toast and loads of ketchup and hot sauce.

When cooking at home, the vegan breakfast possibilities are limited only by your imagination. Smoothies, pancakes, waffles, French toast, tofu scrambles, breakfast burritos, muffins, scones… But, since moving back to Australia, I seem to have fallen into a breakfast rut. I blame it on a few things. One is lack of kitchen equipment—no waffle iron means no waffles, no blender means no smoothies, and I’ve only very recently gotten a muffin pan. Another reason is a lack of ingredients. How can I make tempeh bacon when the only tempeh in the shops tastes like mush? The main reason, though, is Andy’s narrow thoughts on breakfast. For morning meals, he likes cereal, porridge, or stuff on toast (namely, spaghetti).

Every now and then I try, gently, to push him outside of his breakfast comfort zone with a tofu frittata or a breakfast burrito, but he thinks it tastes like a dinner, rather than a breakfast. Sometimes I make muffins or scones, but he doesn’t like pastry for breakfast. Mostly, though, we eat cereal, porridge, and spaghetti on toast—not the most photogenic of meals.

On the weekends, we sometimes make pancakes. I generally stick to recipes, sometimes playing around with different spice and topping combinations. Andy, on the other hand, lets his imagination run wild. These pancakes have pureed mango, shredded coconut, orange marmalade, nutmeg, and I don’t remember what else. They are coloured bright blue thanks a whole bottle of blue food dye we acquired from a friend who was clearing out a kitchen before moving interstate. I called them smurf pancakes—they are so blue they match the plate!

Oatmeal is a great breakfast, especially on the days when we bike to uni because it leaves us feeling full all morning. Plus, it’s easy to play around with different flavours to keep it from getting boring. Strawberry jam, cinnamon, and dried fruit are a good combo.

Our basic, fallback porridge is dried mixed fruit, soy milk, cinnamon, and brown sugar.

When we had all those mushrooms the other week, I decided I wanted to have a big cook-up brekky. I sautéed the mushies with soy sauce and maple syrup. I also made some home fries with onion, potato, shredded carrot, and diced tomato, all spiced with caraway and wattle seeds. And, to add some much needed sauciness to the plate, baked beans (aka a tin of cannellini beans mixed with a tin of tomato soup). The piece of toast was perfect for mopping up all the flavours that were left on the plate.

Walnut date bread—for those really good dates, this is the perfect thing to serve for breakfast the next morning. Just kidding. Sort of. Dates and walnuts and LSA and oats and whole meal flour. It’s a hearty, filling bread that made great toast.

It also made great Fronch Toast, the VwaV recipe. I thought this was great. It reminded me of all those late night trips to Denny’s and ordering Fabulous French Toast with lots of maple syrup… yum. Andy didn’t love it. I tell him he’s a breakfast grinch.

Who doesn't love to read some news with brekky? Here's a really good article about why we still need feminism--here's a spoiler: women are still oppressed!