Thursday, May 15, 2008

Two ways to start the day

Thanks everyone for your nice comments on my last post. I should add that I cry quite easily, so stress tears are not an uncommon sight. But you're all so sweet, so how can I not be in a good mood today?!

Now, continuing on with breakfast foods Andy doesn’t love...

Scones. I read Vaala’s post about banana pecan scones and remembered my love of the pastry that reminds Andy of Grandma. I flicked through a few of my cookbooks and decided on ‘Ginger-spiced scones with cashews and dates’ from Vegan Planet.

To make things easier, I mixed the dry ingredients the night before, and also chopped the cashews and dates. Then in the morning all I had to do was heat up the oven, cut in some buttah and mix in some soy milk and egg replacer. I found the mix really dry and crumbly, but I was nervous to overmix because I didn’t want tough scones. So I just kind of patted it all together and baked them. They were really good fresh out of the oven—beautifully soft and chewy and perfect with a cuppa. But they were still good when I came home in the afternoon, and they hadn’t gone hard like I expected when they cooled. Also, I cut the recipe in half and still had enough for a few people.

On the other side of the spectrum from sweet pastry, I made up a fried veggie brekky one morning. I fried up some potato and carrot, and then added a little block of frozen spinach. At the end I stirred through a spoonful of chilli-capsicum deli spread. With it, I had a homemade bagel spread with vegemite.

And of course, a cuppa tea. We have a habit of buying tea when its on special or reduced to clear, to the effect of a kitchen drawer absolutely chock full of herbal teas. Four or five types of green tea, white tea, peppermint tea, rooibos tea, chamomile tea, mint and ginger tea, Echinacea tea, lemon tea, lemon ginger tea, lemon black tea, black currant tea.... The list goes on. These two photos feature Darjeeling, with soy milk, and ‘Be Happy Tea’, a blend of St John’s Wort and berries. The ‘Be Happy’ blend is the new love of my life—sweet and tart and bright pink, and with a smiling face on the little tabby thing attached to the bag. What can I say? I love tea.

7 comments:

LizNoVeggieGirl said...

I LOVE scones - especially chewy, dense ones. Those ginger-spiced scones sound perfect with the cashews and dates - yum! Good idea, preparing the dough ahead of time!

Enjoy your tea! :0)

Anonymous said...

I'm not a big fan of scones, but I'm sure I would love yours!

Vaala ◪ said...

Oooo, J loves cashews so maybe I can tempt him towards scones with that recipe! Now to see if the library has the book...

We just bought the Be Happy tea the other week too! It's my favourite and seriously, I seem to always feel better after drinking it too so it must work!!

Vegan_Noodle said...

That scone looks delicious. What a great idea to prep the night before to make it quick in the morning!

I have never been much of a tea fan, but feel like I should keep trying since it's supposed to be so good for you. I should start with the Happy Tea :-)

Alicia said...

Oh, I love tee too (teetoo, hehe), specially a mild green japanese one kukicha.
And your scones look great! I've only have them once in NYC (before I went vegan - no vegan scones), and I found it weird, because it's so different from all the pastry I've had before!

Bianca said...

Your fried veggie brekky looks so freakin' good! I've never had vegemite, but I assume it's a little like Marmite? Anyhow, I love, love, love Marmite!

Lisa S. said...

Oooh scones! I've been making the blueberry scones out of The Joy of Vegan Baking - to the joy of my friends! I can't get enough of them. mmm....

And the fried brekky looks great! You know what's a fun thing to do w/random tea bags? Throw 2 or 3 into a pot of rice while it steams. Oooh, so good! I love "green tea rice" under my veggie stir fry.