Sometimes things do not work out well with meticulous planning, and other times things go perfectly well with little preparation.
This dish is a good example of the latter.
The idea came to me last night when I realized that I might have all the right ingredients to make eggs benedict.
Well, I just found a couple of sourdough English muffins and a half log of seitan meat in the back of the freezer, and I knew I still had homemade mayo (I could use as the base to make “Hollandaise sauce.”).
So all I needed was soft tofu, which I got on our way back home from a drive to a park last night.
I used an ice cream scooper to gently scoop up silken tofu.
It resembles a poached egg, doesn’t it?
Toasted homemade sourdough English muffin, fried Canadian “bacon” (homemade seitan), silken tofu, and vegan Hollandaise sauce (homemade vegan mayo, lemon juice, turmeric, salt, sugar, garlic powder, onion powder, nutritional yeast), and a sprinkle of Hungarian paprika.
The Eggs benedict was served with sautéed asparagus.
We found beautiful asparagus at the local farmers market.
It was an easy choice, as asparagus was pretty much the only vegetable (other than herbs) sold at the market at this time.
All the vendors were selling asparagus (for the same price), and it was hard to decide from whom we should buy.
But I think we picked the right one.
The ones we got looked AND tasted great.
I also added salad.
Using olive salad (from a jar) is one of my favorite ways to dress my salad.
It works because it has the saltiness and the oil that you want, AND you can add additional veggie chunks.
I was super happy with the result, but apparently this dish impressed my hubby as well.
He said it was one of the top five breakfast all time (including the period of time when he was not on the plant-based diet)!
(And he did all the dishes and kitchen clean-up while I was taking pictures. He really is the best.)
I like different types of bread, but I have a lot of memories associated with bagels.
The first time I was introduced to bagel was when I was home-staying at a Californian family as part of the summer ESL (English as a Second Language) program of the college I was attending in Japan.
I went to ESL class at church while staying at one of the church members’ house for about a month.
I still remember how delicious it tasted the first time I tried bagel smeared with a thick layer of cream cheese.
Since I liked it so much that my host family would make sure they had bagels every morning for my breakfast.
I was 19 at that time.
Who knew I would be back in the U.S. and baking bagels myself later in my life.
Seed bagles: black sesame, white sesame, hemp seeds.
Here is my second attempt at baking sourdough bread.
This one is “Number 2a.”
It’s “2a” because I baked another loaf at the same time (so the other one is 2b).
I added turmeric per my hubby’s request, and it definitely shows its color.
I’m still so in love with this rustic look of sourdough.
Now you can really see the beautiful golden color.
I was interested in sourdough bread, and when Tartine bakery published their bread book, I was so close to trying it.
But then it took me almost a decade before I finally made my own sourdough starter.
(I didn’t use Tartine’s instructions for my starter or bread; Ten years ago I was able to look at the book from the libary after waiting for a couple of months, but their instructions werer too long and too overwhelming to me.)
If you are thinking about it, do it.
It’s not as hard as you think, and the whole experience from raising my baby starter to actually baking bread has been so amazing.
