Las Vegan Bakery

After nearly 11 months on maternity leave (aka the best time ever!) I returned to work last week.  I am lucky enough to be only working 3 days a week but it is making me appreciate the weekends again.  So this weekend I decided that we should head out to breakfast to start the weekend off in the best possible way.

I hadn't been to Las Vegan since the new owners had taken over & Greg has never been so with the lure of pancakes we decided to go there.  After much indecisiveness I ended up getting scrambled tofu on rosemary & olive sourdough with tempeh bacon & avocado while Greg got the sour cherry pancakes.

Greg loved his pancakes, they were fluffy & cinamonny & very delicious.

The sourdough toast with my breakfast was filled with big chunks of olives & was amazing, I would have been more than happy just to have that toast on its own.   But I don't think that the olive & rosemary flavour went well with the curried flavour of the scrambled tofu.  I liked both things separately but not so much together.  The tempeh bacon was also really, really good & has inspired me to start experimenting with making my own.

Overall we did really enjoy our breakfasts & it was a great start to the day.  We paid $25 for both meals & a coffee each.  They are also quite baby friendly with a few high chairs available.

I couldn't find anyone else talking up the Las Vegan breakfast, but others who have paid a visit at other times of the day are Vegan About Town, In the Mood for Noodles & Easy as Vegan Pie.


Las Vegan Bakery
22 Smith Street

Collingwood

03 9415 9001

Vegan MoFo - French Toast

Is there anything better than french toast for breakfast?  I have tried making a few different french toast recipes in the past & when I was googling recipes for the best french toast I came across a few recipes that featured nutritional yeast which I found odd but I decided to go with it.  Luckily, you can't taste the nutritional yeast in the end result at all as I was not looking forward to cheesy toast!

I used slices of baguette & soaked them in the following mixture:

• 1/2 cup soy milk
• 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
• 1 tbsp plain flour
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
• decent shake of cinnamon

They were then pan fried in a frypan just lightly sprayed with some canola oil.  I served these with blueberries & some tofutti cream cheese mixed with maple syrup. 

This is an awesome meal.

East Brunswick Club - Weekend Breakfast II

For Greg's first Father's Day I told him that I would take him for a meal of his choice & he decided that he would like to go back to EBC for breakfast & try the pancakes.

I was quite hungry so got the Vegan Big Breakfast (which Greg got last time) & he went for The Elvis pancakes.
My breakfast was good, but I am still not sure that I love their scrambled tofu, although I think it was better than last time.  The toast is also much better, it is now turkish bread & it comes with nuttelex on it.  But the whole time I was jealously watching Greg eat his pancakes because they looked amazing!  I had a little bit & they were so, so good - fluffy & perfect.  They came with heaps of maple syrup, fake bacon, banana, ice cream & peanut butter.  Greg really enjoyed them & I want to go back next weekend & eat this.

Vegan Big Breakfast

The Elvis Pancakes

Breakfast is available on weekends from 12-4pm & they now also do $12 parmas on the weekend after 2pm.

East Brunswick Club

280 Lygon Street

East Brunswick  

03 9388 9794

Breakfast after dark

I am a big fan of what my friend Anthony calls "breakfast after dark" which is breakfasty foods eaten for dinner.  This version of breakfast after dark featured scrambled tofu, roasted tomato, mushrooms & an awesome hash brown.  The hash brown was by far the highlight of the meal & was based on a recipe I found on food.com.  These hash browns are really good & there is a possibility that I ate 3 of them.

Hash Browns
INGREDIENTS

• 1/2cup water (approximately)
• 1/4 cup raw cashews
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 clove crushed garlic
• 1 tsp massel chicken stock powder
• 1/2 small onion, finely diced (I whizzed mine up in the food processor so it was really fine)
• 2 large potatoes peeled

METHOD

1.  Boil potatoes until just cooked through & set aside until cool enough to handle
2. Blend cashews and water with garlic, stock powder & onion powder until smooth - I started with about 1/4 cup water & just added more until it was really smooth
3. Grate the potatoes into a bowl & add the onion to it
4. Pour the cashew mixture into the potato & onion & mix together well, add salt & pepper if you like
5. Shape the potato mix into 4 flattish balls & place on a greased or lined tray
6. Turn the oven on to 200degrees & bake the hash browns for about 30 minutes or until well browned

East Brunswick Club - Weekend Breakfast

I caught up with a friend for dinner at East Brunswick Club recently & was a little bit excited to see that they are now doing breakfast from 12-4 on weekends.  For the vegan options they have The Vegan Basic ($10) which is sourdough toast with facon & scrambled tofu, the Vegan Big Breakfast ($15) which is sourdough toast, mushrooms, roasted tomato, spinach, scrambled tofu, facon, fauxsage & a hash brown.  They also have 3 different sorts of pancakes which are veganisable -

• with maple syrup & ice cream 
• with maple syrup, bacon & ice cream 
• the 'Elvis' which I think consisted of something along the lines of peanut butter, banana, bacon, maple syrup & ice cream

I got the Vegan Basic & Greg got the Vegan Big Breakfast.  The scrambled tofu was made with silken tofu so it was much more what I remember the texture of scrambled eggs to be like than any other scrambled tofu I have tried before.  I am not sure about this, I liked it but didn't love it & was not a big fan of the toast that they use.  Greg, however, really enjoyed his breakfast & I tried his hash brown which was really good.
I am interested in going back & trying the pancakes because they did look pretty good.

East Brunswick Club

280 Lygon Street

East Brunswick  

03 9388 9794

Soulfood Cafe

There has been a bit of debate amongst my friends as to whether I should celebrate Mother's Day this year or not.  Given that I  am 8 months pregnant I say yes, luckily Greg agreed (after some convincing) & bought me a present & also took me out to breakfast to anywhere of my choice the day after as he had an RDO.  I decided to go to Soulfood as we don't often get to go there since he works Monday to Saturday & they don't open on Sundays.

We both had the Monster Vegan breakfast, as also blogged about by Steph here.  It costs $15.80 & consists of 2 pieces multigrain sourdough toast, scrambled tofu, mushrooms, tomato, spinach, hash browns & tomato kusundi.  This is a massive breakfast!  I couldn't finish mine & still had to come home & have a nap afterwards, didn't have lunch & am still not very hungry for dinner.  I love the scrambled tofu here but the serving size is verrrrrry generous & because the tofu is very full flavoured it can get a little bit too much..  I also love the mushrooms here, I have a bit of an aversion to mushrooms at the moment but really enjoyed these.  I didn't love the hash browns (although Greg did), I just found them a bit bland although they were nice & crunchy.  This breakfast used to come with rice cake things which I loved & preferred to the hash browns.  And, although I have taken it off my plate in the photo, you do get a little dish of nuttelex for your toast.

All in all it is a good value & very tasty breakfast, but don't plan on eating again for awhile afterwards..

Soulfood Cafe
273 Smith Street
Fitzroy  VIC  3065
www.soulfoodcafe.com.au

French toast

I was stuck at home on Saturday morning waiting for some furniture to be delivered so decided to make myself a tasty breakfast of very simple french toast. 

I just whisked together some soy milk with a couple of teaspoons of egg replacer, a bit of vanilla extract, nutmeg & cinnamon, dipped some thickly sliced bread in it coating both sides well.  Then cooked it over medium heat in a non stick frypan with a little bit of melted nuttelex - I probably should have cooked it a bit longer but I tend to get impatient where breakfast is concerned!  I drizzled it with maple syrup & it was delicious!

Grigons & Orr

My best friend has just moved back from a 6 year stint in Perth & we used to always do breakfast together.  I don't often go out for breakfast, but now that he is back I think it will become a much more regular thing.  I had a couple of places that I wanted to check out for brekky & one was Grigons & Orr, especially after reading Steph's review.  I have been wanting to go there for ages & it is only an 8 minute walk from my work so can definitely see myself going there fairly regularly from now on because my breakfast was delicious!

I had the pan fried tofu with mushrooms & spinach.  I have no idea what spices the tofu was coated in but it was delicious!!  It was also not a super heavy breakfast which I liked.  I also ordered a nectarine iced tea which was filled with diced fresh nectarine & mint & was also really good.  I think they do all day breakfasts so that sounds perfect to me for a workday lunch!

Grigons & Orr
Cnr Chetwynd & Queensberry Streets
North Melbourne

Vegan Brunch English Muffins

After reading this post on Easy as Vegan Pie I decided that I wanted home made english muffins for breakfast the next day. I have made crumpets before which are really delicious, but had never thought about making muffins. And it ended up being a rainy Sunday morning so it was perect muffin making & eating weather.

The recipe from Vegan Brunch is really, really easy but I had issues getting the cornmeal to stick to the muffins so I tried doing it for the first batch & ended up bypassing that step in the following batches. Also, the recipe makes heaps!! I cut them with egg rings & I made over 20 so I now have lots of muffiny goodness in my freezer. I ate mine warm out of the oven with nuttelex & blackberry jam - yum!