Weekend Brunch

I've been looking through some of my older photos on Flickr and I came across this triad of brunch photos. This might be my absolute favorite thing to eat for brunch. I know I've said this before, but just looking at these pictures is making me hungry. Good thing it's almost lunchtime.

The Tofu Bennies, Temphe Bacon and Diner Home Fries are from Vegan Brunch and the chard is from the ground. I know, I'm hilarious. I'll be here all week, folks. Oh, and did you notice that huge slice of heirloom tomato? That's right, there's no playing around when it comes to tomato slices at my house. I've been making the Tempeh Bacon recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance for years now and love it. The one in Vegan Brunch is pretty similar, but has some different stuff in it. I'm not sure which one I like better, I've never done a side by side taste comparison. But there's a fun idea for breakfast! If I know I'm going to make this in the morning, I try and marinate my tempeh slices overnight just to give it a little more flavor.

Okay, so I didn't cut the bennies into cute little circles. It looks super cute, but then I have all this leftover tofu and really squares and circles taste pretty much the same. I usually wait for company to get fancy with my tofu cutting skills. This was just a weekend at home. I've made a bunch of things from Vegan Brunch, but the bennies are one recipe that I keep going back to over and over again. I make them on english muffins sometimes, but I actually prefer them just like this - on a bed of potatoes.

And speaking of potatoes, these Diner Home Fries are delish! Back in the day, I used to buy hash browns from the freezer section of the grocery store. I would always get the one with the onions and green peppers in it because that was my favorite. I never really tried to add those things to my potatoes at home until a big "duh" went through my head when I was reading the recipe for these. So good. If I'm not feeling so hands off that I just want to roast my potatoes in the oven and forget about them until the timer goes off, I make them this way. The hollandaise sauce from the bennies goes great on them, too. So good!

Breakfast in Tofino

We took a little trip up to Tofino, BC this past weekend and made a sort of mini-vacation of it. We realized that we probably won't get to take an actual vacation this year so we thought we'd just make a 3-day weekend a few times between now and fall since that's much easier to do sometimes. Besides, there are still a ton of places in BC that James and I both would like to explore.

Funny enough we were trying to decide between Tofino and Jasper for our first long weekend when the internets helped decide for us. I get a ton of emails every morning from all of those coupon sites like Groupon, Ethical Deal, Living Social, etc. One morning a coupon for a half-price stay in a really nice little resort in Tofino came up. Perfect! Half price made it about the same as what we would have paid to stay anywhere else and now we get to pretend we're all fancy and stuff.

The place we stayed was sort of like a little condo on the beach. We had a little living room and kitchen, which was really nice. I love being able to cook when we're traveling. It makes it a bit less stressful to find food, especially first thing in the morning when you're barely awake anyway. As you can see, we did pretty well for breakfast while we were there.

It was kind of amazing how awesome this breakfast turned out to be. Not that I didn't think it would be good, but wow. This was so delicious it's not even funny. We found a little organic market in Tofino thanks to some help from my Twitter friends. We got a bunch of veggies for breakfast and some stuff to make a quick and easy dinner, plus a jar of pickles. Because really, we like pickles quite a bit. It was a bummer to find that these dill pickles had sugar added to the brine. I'm not a fan of sweet pickles, and especially not sweet pickles pretending to be savory and tricking me. To be fair, James didn't really think they were sweet, I just pick up on that like crazy in things that I expect to be savory.

Isn't that little kitchen cute?! The oven was full sized, too! Living in Vancouver, I've almost forgotten what full sized appliances look like. Everything is miniature here since the apartments are so small.

We ended up just buying a tub of Earth Balance instead of olive oil for cooking everything. That way we could also have a loaf of garlic bread with our dinner and not have to shell out for both Earth Balance and olive oil. I wish I had thought to bring that stuff with me. Oh well, it's not like we won't use it.

James spotted the fiddleheads right away at the market. I've never had them so I was quite intrigued. Thankfully there was a little flyer thing that gave a short run-down on how to cook these or I would have probably steamed them, though I'm sure that would have turned out just fine, too.

First you want to clean all of the brown bits off of the fiddlheads. It's hard to get it all, but just get as much as you can. To cook them, basically you want to slice up some garlic, saute it in olive oil for a few minutes then add the cleaned fiddleheads. Saute for 5-7 minutes and you're done. It's really that simple. They were quite fantastic.

The fiddleheads tasted quite unique. Sort of like asparagus or broccoli with just a tiny, subtle hint of bitterness. Sauteed for just a few minutes like that they were just soft enough and retain a bit of crunch. Yum! I'm going to check the local farmers market for some more of these for sure.

Oh, the rainbow chard. I have no idea what made these so stellar. I just lightly steamed the chard, I didn't even add salt or anything. They were so good, I couldn't stop eating them. As much as I love kale, I had forgotten how delicious this stuff can be. Wow.

We rounded everything out with some roasted yellow potatoes and sweet potatoes. I don't normally throw in a sweet potato with my breakfast potatoes, but I think I might do that more often from now on. Not only did it look cute, it was tasty, too!

We pretty much made all of this on the stove top, too. The potatoes I boiled until just soft and then stuck them in a 350 F oven with some Earth Balance, salt and pepper while I finished cooking everything else. Keep that in mind when you're traveling. A hot plate or a kitchenette or even a camping stove can bring you a wonderful, healthy meal that'll put a smile on your face (even if you haven't had your coffee yet) and keep you going all day. I know I was thrilled to have had such a great breakfast before a day of searching the beaches for starfish and looking for whales.

We didn't get any photos of the whales, though we did see 3 humpbacks! We did take a lot of photos at the beach while we were climbing on rocks and peering into tidepools. Though, here's a tip for you. If it's a really sunny day, but it's still cold and you're out playing around on the beach, think about not wearing your scarf. I had my scarf on all day long in the sun because it was cold, especially the wind. Now my face has a ton of color but my neck is stark white. It looks like I'm one of those women who wears too much face makeup of the wrong color for her skin or something.

Edit: Yes, these are my own photos. A couple of people asked me about them. We took a seaplane tour, that's how I got that shot of one of the islands. :)

Hey, look! More fennel!

Yeah, I made fennel again. Yum! I didn't get all fancy like last time. I pretty much just piled together a bunch of stuff that I had already. I still like the other fennel recipe the best, but this is good, too and cleanse-friendly!


Fennel and Greens and Lentils, Oh My

2 Tablespoons oil (I used grapeseed)
1 bulb fennel, chopped
1 bunch red chard, rinsed and torn into pieces
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 cup lentils, cooked (I just used 1 can, which is roughly a little bit more than 1 cup, but whatever)
2 cups cooked brown rice

Saute the fennel in the oil over medium heat. Stir occasionally and cook it until the fennel just starts to turn golden in places. Throw in the garlic and saute for another minute or two. Add the red chard and a splash of water. Put a lid on the pot so that the chard will steam a bit, lifting the lid to turn everything with tongs a few times. Once the greens are all wilty, you're done!

Layer brown rice, lentils and your fennel/greens mixture on a plate. You can add salt and pepper if you want. I added some salt-free Spike for some extra seasoning and flavor.

Yum!

Tarragon Tempeh

If my life was a sit-com, there would have been a moral to the story at the end of today's episode. That moral is: Buy the cool veggies the day you see them at the market and don't wait for silly things like time to cook them. I was so bummed when I went to the market today. I saw both English Peas and Fava Beans all cute and fresh in their perky little pods last week. Today I go all excited to buy a bunch of both of these, but alas, no English Peas or Fava Beans to be had. :( I was really looking forward to those. I'm going to start stalking the market for the next couple of weeks in case they get more. If so, there's a yummy awesome salad in the future starring Fava Beans. And really, that is exciting because if you know me, you know how I feel about salad... (quite frequently being the only thing to eat at restaurants when going out with a big group, I don't tend to make salads at home very often)

If you can find English Peas, I'm jealous of you. Also, you can and should use those instead of the regular peas in this recipe because it will be more awesome. And who doesn't like it when things are more awesome? Well, I'm sure someone doesn't, but that person would be an idiot and not to be listened to. Ahem... the recipe:

Tarragon Tempeh with Red Chard on a Bed of Peas

1 bag frozen peas
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 large shallot, sliced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 package tempeh, cut into small cubes
1 large Portabella mushroom, chopped
1 bunch red chard
1 Tablespoon dried tarragon or 3 Tablespoons fresh

Cook the peas until their cold little hearts are thawed out and warm. In a large frying pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. After the oil is hot, add the shallots and saute for about 3 minutes. Add the garlic and saute for another 3 minutes or so. You'll know you're done when the shallots are translucent and starting to caramelize a little bit.

Add the tempeh cubes and stir everything around to make sure that the tempeh gets to be friends with all of the shallots and garlic. Add the chopped up portabella mushroom and stir again. Add the tarragon and saute for about 10 minutes, stirring often.

Tear the red chard into pieces and add them to your pan. Just let it sit on top of everything else and put a lid on that sucker so you get a nice sauna going for the chard. Once it starts to look like it's wilting, stir again, but be careful that you don't accidentally stir the greens out of the pan like I have a tendency to do. Escapee alert! Keep cooking until the greens are done.

Put some peas on a plate like you're making a little bed for the tempeh stuff. Spoon the tempeh stuff on top of the peas and marvel at how cute your food looks. Don't stand there gawking for too long, though. Make sure to dig in and eat! I added some fresh ground pepper to mine, but some of you peeps will likely want to add some salt also.

This will make enough for 2-3 servings depending on how hungry you are. I ended up with 2. One for tonight and one for work lunch tomorrow. I love when I get leftovers for lunch like this!

To console myself at the market because of the lack of Fava Beans and English Peas, I bought some Coconut Water.

I read something about this the other day. Apparently it's all the rage with some of those vapid celebrity types right now. Not that I want to be anything like those crack whores, but I did get interested to try the Coconut Water. It's the water from the inside of the coconut with a little bit of sugar added. But don't be fooled - even though there's some sugar in it, it's not very sweet at all, which I love. I might even buy some of this again. It comes in these cute little boxes that look like juice boxes. I'm totally bringing one to work tomorrow to eat with my tempeh. :D