JC’s Birthday Breakfast fest.

This was the second birthday I’ve celebrated with JC, and I wanted to make it delicious and awesome. And I’m pretty sure I succeeded. Here is an overview of the preparations for our lovely day together.

The day before I started by marinating tofu circles with a solution of black salt, vegetable broth, pepper, salt, and lemon. There is a great recipe for tofu marinade in Vegan Brunch that I used as a guide.

I started out by waking up just a little too early on a Saturday to bake whole wheat English muffins (recipe from All Recipes). We still had the bag of the Monkton Organic Farm and Bakery flour we picked up from Trinity-Bellwoods Farmers Market a month ago. My mom commented on how light they looked, but they were perfect. After I covered them with a bit of coarse (maybe too coarse) cornmeal and stuck them in the oven it was time to start the hollandaise sauce.

Ever since JC appeared to be a connaisseur of hollandaise sauce (judging by his endless vegan benedict orders whenever we go to a new place for brunch,) I’ve made it a small mental goal to make hollandaise sauce that reaches the same level as what he remembers. I came pretty close this time, flavourwise it was exactly what I was going for, but texturally, while it was smooth and creamy, it was just a smidge too full of that non-egg texture.

I’m going to pick up some of The Vegg packs at Earth’s General Store when we are in Edmonton next week and try using it to get a more egglike consistency. I suspect it would have a lot to do with the sodium alginate, more kitchen experiments will be needed (or just less flour, more sodium alginate.) My Vegan Hollandaise recipe.

Next I started frying the marinated tofu slices. This I was very happy with. The black salt and the extra firm fresh tofu rounds were very very great. Just two minutes on each side was perfect.

While they were frying I put together Vegan Ceasars in mason jars, and topped them off with fresh celery stalks. Yum!

I sliced up some tomatoes, put them on a sliced english muffin, topped with the tofuegg, then poured on the hollandaise sauce and served breakfast in bed in style.

Other stuff that was on the menu for the day:

Midnight Poutine at Poutini’s the night before

Picnic at the Toronto Islands

Slow Cooked Eggplant No-Parmigiana

And a chocolate vanilla ice cream cake: