Breakfast of Chumpions

That would have been Breakfast of Champions, but I was making it. And I don't really learn from past mistakes. I made my vegan pancakes again to round out a breakfast of drip and a shortbread cookie, to see if I had in fact ruined the cookies. Rewind - I made shortbread cookies last night. It was late, I was tired, and I wasn't too patient. I didn't properly cream the butter and sugar before adding flour, I didn't roll the dough out thin enough, and I didn't pre-cut the cookies deep enough. Oh, I also put on too much salt/not enough chocolate. They still taste good, but are not pretty.

Back to the pancakes: I scaled it down from 1/2 cup flour to 1/3 cup flour (so 1/3 cup milk, etc). I used spelt flour this time, so they look much more like pancakes and act much more like pancakes than the buckwheat version. The one thing I forgot to scale - the banana. I still put in half, and of a large one at that. Looking at them, you would think them a delicious and beautiful specimen of veganus pancakinar. You would be right - just a mushy one. They look cooked, but when the batter is about 1/3 or so banana, you can't really cook something through. Lesson learned: less banana in the batter.

Also, I got semolina flour so I went right into cooking with it. The recipe I want to cook needs 3 nights, and I wanted the bread for the next day, so I scrapped it. I did my standard mini baguettes (a very liquid dough) and replaced a full 50% of the flour (by weight) with semolina flour. The dough took forever to firm up - not until the 3rd stretch and fold (of 4) was I really doing much besides letting it ooze, and that was after giving it an extra 10 minutes to hydrate. If doing a similar substitution, you should probably do a soak before adding the yeast and moving on to stretching (that is, combine the flour and water, stir, and let it sit for 20 minutes or so before moving on with the recipe). Also dill in bread is pretty gross when you put in as much as I did, so don't put in as much as I did. Luckily I didn't measure at all so I'm free to repeat my mistakes in the future. Go me!

A Few Weekend Dishes

A few dishes, but not so many photos. One in fact. Here you go, you can have it now just so you, dear reader, aren't left hanging.

With that out of the way, we can get straight to the meat of this post. Or, not meat, as the case may be. Bay to Breakers was this weekend, an event I boldly decided to run (and then home). Given the distance, carbs were in order for Saturday dinner. I had gone to the farmer's market in the morning and picked up some assorted vegetables - carrots, the tiniest fennel I've ever seen, and flowering broccolini. I had no clue what I wanted to do with the carrots, but the fennel and broccolini purchase was with intent. I needed to show E that broccolini was delicious.

I pulled out my chosen weapons for this trial - a very hot oven, olive oil, and sea salt. Turns out, you can make most things delicious with those ingredients. I think the trial was a success in my favor, but my guess is E thinks it inconclusive as the salt was what she enjoyed, not the green stuff. I still think I'm right. We ate it with soba noodles, tofu, and carrots all in a peanut-butter based sauce. Fairly delicious stuff.

There was also the matter of before-breakfast and after-breakfast for the race. Awaking at 6 and running at 7 is difficult - you need food, but nothing heavy. I went with my standard "banana and some grain that is easy to digest" which, in this case, was cold oatmeal. You should try it, being very easy to make, very cheap, and very delicious. Just soak some oatmeal in water (or milk, cow or otherwise) for 5-10 minutes and eat it. Maybe add some honey.

After-breakfast was, of course, after the race (and subsequent run home). First order was finishing off some chewy electrolyte/sugar things and scarfing down a protein energy bar. After this, and a much needed shower, it was french toast time. Day-old Pain au Levain, eggs, and a bit of flavor. I think I have a new favorite for post-jog - goodbye, burrito. Don't worry, I'll still eat you at 2am. You aren't gone forever.

_______________o_______________

Crisped Broccolini with Fennel

Variable serving size

Broccolini to feed N people

Fresh fennel

Olive oil

Sea salt

(optional) lemon juice

Preheat oven to 475. Chop the fennel bulbs into strips and reserve the leaves on the side. In a bowl, toss the broccolini and chopped fennel in a bit of olive oil, just enough to make it shiny all over. Add in a pinch of salt and a few drops of lemon juice and toss. Prepare a baking sheet with foil, and empty the bowl onto it. Spread everything out so nothing is stacked.

Add on top a little bit more salt and the fennel leaves, and bake for 10-15 minutes, until the florets have begun to char. Eat immediately, as it will cool and then get soggy very quickly.

_______________o_______________

Standard French Toast

Makes 4 slices

4 slices of soft, chewy bread

2 eggs

1/4 c milk (I used almond, you can use cow)

~2 tsp cinnamon (didn't really measure)

~1/4 tsp vanilla extract (ditto)

~1 tsp honey (ditto)

butter for the pan

powdered sugar

In a small bowl, combine everything but the bread, sugar, and butter. Mix with a fork until it looks uniform. Heat a pan over medium. Soak each slice of bread for a minute on each side, then butter the pan and cook for 2-3 minutes on one side. Sprinkle some powdered sugar on the uncooked side, flip, and cook for 2-3 more minutes. Sprinkle again with powdered sugar and devour.

_______________o_______________

Tofu Soba Stir Fry in a Peanut Sauce

Man, I don't really remember what I did. It had peanut butter, water, vinegar, and olive oil. So, like, combine those things in random amounts and see if you get a tasty sauce. If it isn't tasty, try a different ratio if ingredients. Maybe just give up and eat some peanut butter from the jar.

I won't tell anyone.

Experimenting (But Not With Shortbread)

So my last post I mentioned adding cornmeal to the vegan pancake recipe. It wasn't corny enough - I had a 1:3 cornmeal-to-flour ratio and suggested a 1:2 or even 2:3 ratio. Well, in my finest tradition of doing things wrong, I said "lets take the cornmeal to eleven". I used a 4:3 ratio. Yeah, thats right, more cornmeal than flour. How you like dem apples?

Personally, I didn't much like dem apples. You might, but I'd recommend sugar. For reference, I used the previous recipe linked with 1/3 cup cornmeal and 1/4 cup flour. It made... a crepe? I guess we can call it that. I also crushed blueberries into it, then topped it with a few more for good measure. I think adding either a teaspoon+ of sugar, or doubling the amount of crushed blueberries, would have greatly increased the edibility.

For figuring out these ratios, I looked at a recipe I had for savory cornbread (2:3 cornmeal-to-flour ratio) and the cornbread muffin recipe on the box of cornmeal (1:1 cornmeal-to-flour, plus lots of sugar). Could stand to improve my recipe-reading skill, but that only comes from trying and failing, I guess. At least it was edible if the bite contained a blueberry.

Some Easy Meals

Some days, I feel like cooking an epic feast; spending an hour or more in the kitchen, chasing down exotic ingredients, and cleaning a myriad of dishes. Other days, I just want some rice with tasty stuff on it and to play videogames. Friday was one of those lazy days. The request for dinner was "something with crunchy vegetables" and, if you ever get that request and are feeling a bit lazy, have I got the meal for you. Prepares in the time it takes too cook rice plus 5 more minutes, only dirties a pot and a cutting board beyond what you eat with (and if you eat out of the pot, I won't blame you), and is good as leftovers. I present: crunchy vegetables over rice!

The recipe is at the end of this post, but the basic idea I had in my head was "some vegetables that are crunchy and good cold plus some rice plus some seasoning". I managed to find fresh, organic carrots and broccoli plus some fresh (but not organic) snap peas. That plus my go-to asian seasonings of sesame oil, soy sauce, and furikake makes a pretty good meal over cold rice. Some people disagreed and said it should be warmed with more seasoning. It turns out some people were right.

I also tried something new with my tried-and-true vegan pancakes - cornmeal. Lessons I should have learned from previous uses of cornmeal: it does not substitute 1-for-1 with flour. It is something more like 1 cup of flour --> 1.5 cups of cornmeal if you don't adjust the liquid. They came out a little gummy and not very cornmealy; next time I'll up the cornmeal amount (and I've done so in the recipe below). They still managed to be completely delicious if a bit weird on the tooth.

Simple Vegan Pancakes, Improved

An improvement to the vegan pancake recipe I've posted before, along with more photos. This adds a banana to the batter itself and some honey to sweeten the deal. The banana alters the taste a bit, but mostly serves to increase the creaminess of the finished pancakes. The end result are very fluffy pancakes that are similar in texture to the buttermilk pancakes I grew up with.

Ingredients you will need (to make 4 pancakes, enough for 1 person with a small side)

• 1/4 cup pastry flour
• 1/4 cup buckwheat flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk
• 1 banana
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp honey
• tiny pinch of sea salt

---

1) Cut the banana in half and mush it with the back of a spoon into a paste.

---

2) Stir in the rest of the ingredients, saving half the other half of the banana for later.

---

3) Place two spoonfuls (ish, about 1/4 of the batter) into a frying pan on medium low. Flip the pancake when bubbles form in the center, like this.

---

4) Let cook about ten more seconds, remove from heat. Top pancakes with remainder of banana, sliced.

The Real Reason Dinosaurs Went Extinct

Because they are so delicious!

Delicious dinosaur English muffins

Yes, those are English muffins made in the shape of dinosaurs, using cookie cutters. They were delicious. They looked awesome. Most of them were missing legs, heads, or other assorted appendages (before we even took any bites, none the less!). We ate them a few ways:

Delicious as (kind of) eggs florentine!

Delicious coated in mashed dinosaur organs (strawberry flavoured)

The recipe was from Artisan Breads Everyday - yet another cold fermenting dough, and containing no sourdough starter. It was prepped on a Thursday when I woke up and cooked on a Saturday. This was the first enriched bread I've made - that is, one consisting of more than flour, yeast, and water. Much of the liquid in the cold fermented dough was milk, into which honey and olive oil were dissolved. Added to this were the standard bread ingredients, mixed by hand and neither kneaded nor stretch-and-folded, but simply refrigerated for two nights.

The morning of baking, the dough got the standard rising period followed by folding in warm water and baking soda to make it rise even more (it bubbled slightly, in fact). Sadly, the dough was not as runny as envisioned and it didn't properly fill the molds. You can see below what they looked like cooking - note the dusting of cornmeal everywhere, to add both texture and prevent everything from getting stuck. These dinosaurs popped right out of the molds - the only casualty was a velociraptor head.

The cooking process, including not-quite-filled cookie cutters.

This worked not as well as hoped, but better than expected. There were a few sad T-Rex and velociraptor molds made, but they had too many skinny limbs and extensions to turn out given the somewhat gelatinous dough. Having English muffin fights should become a part of a complete breakfast.

Breadtastrophe + Brunch

The first loaf of failed bread!

Its so sad and ugly. But still kinda edible!

This was the "Lean Loaf" recipe which is supposed to be very good, halfway between the denser french bread and the very airy, liquidy l'ancienne. Unfortunately, it turned out denser than the french. It also rose way more in the oven than not, hence the "popped" look of the loaf. Something went wrong in the process - our best guess is that the fridge was too cold, so when the dough was placed overnight in the fridge to rise and flavor, it just sat there. Sleeping. Lazy bread.

They can't all be winners, but a bit of peanut butter saved it. Lesson learned for next time: if the recipe says to let the bread rise to 1.5 times its original size overnight, and it hasn't appeared to grow at all, don't cook it.

Luckily the morning was not a complete flavor failure. There was a great omelette served with potatoes. It was filled with bell pepper, mushrooms, salami, and onion. 

The morning savior.

I learned the secret to preparing a delicious and good looking omelette (my previous omelette prepartions have only been delicious). We cooked all of the fillings in a pan until they looked delicious and placed them in a bowl. Then, we buttered the pan heavily and poured in the pre-mixed egg/milk combination. That cooked with the lid on for a while medium heat until it looked very edible but with a somewhat-runny top. We then sprinkled on the grated cheese, re-topped with fillings, and folded it over onto a plate.

Delicious, delicious breakfast "taco".

Baked Pumpkin Oatmeal

Original idea

This picture does not adequately capture how delicious it was. Maybe I should use a real camera, not my cell phone.

Modified recipe from the original (serves 2-ish):

• 1 sugar pumpkin (it was called a "pie pumpkin" at the store)
• 1 1/2 cups rolled oats
• 3/4 cups vanilla soy milk
• 1 apple, diced
• handful of raisins
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• a bit of cinnamon (to taste)
• a bit of brown sugar (to taste)

Preheat oven to 375. Hollow out the pumpkin and soak the stem of the top in warm water (we placed it upside-down in a bowl). In a bowl, mix all ingredients together with a spoon. Fill the cleaned pumpkin with the raw oatmeal. Place pumpkin on a foiled cookie sheet and cook for 20 minutes. Loosely put on the top and cook for 30 minutes more, or until the inside of the pumpkin is cooked. Enjoy.

We ignored the egg, applesauce, and butter in the original recipe. I'm sure the applesauce and butter would add flavor, and the egg would add fluffiness. However, the oatmeal was not lacking in deliciousness so adding the ingredients is optional. The best part was having a cooked pumpkin be your dish - you get to scrape a little of the pumpkin off with your spoon on each bite and it creates a subtle flavor that mixes in with the oatmeal.

Perfect breakfast for a cold, rainy, miserable morning like the one we cooked it on.

Simple Vegan Pancakes

Wonderfully simple - buckwheat based.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup pastry flour

1/4 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
tiny pinch sea salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk

I think you can figure out how to make these. The biggest benefit of making pancakes vegan is removing the limiting factor on shrinking serving sizes - the eggs. This recipe makes just enough for one person and cooks in a few minutes total for the whole batch so you can have delicious pancakes for one in the amount of time it would take to toast bread.

Latke Eggs Bennie

The latkes were made with chopped up bacon in them. Kosher? Nope.