Breakfast

When we had lunch at Nature’s Charm Cafe, my husband found a few fun items.

Coconut Butterscotch and Sweetened Condensed Coconut Milk.

When we bought them, we talked about drizzling these on pancakes.

It took a while for me to be in the mood for making pancakes, but when I saw the butterscotch almost gone (my husband had been eating by itself as a snack), I knew I had to do it.

I still had a lot of ginger at that time, and I added grated ginger to my pancake batter.

I recommend doing it if you like ginger!

I was using New York Times vegan pancake recipe for a while, but I think I like this recipe better.

Homemade vegan butter.

Butterscotch.

Banana slices, and roasted sunflower seeds.

My husband wanted to pour some condensed milk, too.

This was good, but I will eat it as a dessert, not for breakfast (lol).

And I would like a cup of hot BLACK coffee with it.

I liked the Kabocha scones so much that I decided to make more scones.

This time with dry cranberries, rosemary, and ginger.

I found dry cranberries on sale (buy one get one) at the local grocery store.

The rosemary is from my planter garden.

(This is my second rosemary plant, and I’m relieved that it’s doing well (the first one died only after a few days).)

And ginger?

I got a lot of ginger from Happy Grocers.

Lately I’ve been getting their surplus set once a week, and the last few weeks they sent me a lot of ginger.

（You can find out more about their surplus set on this post.)

I’m not complaining.

I like ginger.

I just need to find a lot of ways to enjoy it.

The dry cranberries and rosemary were added to the batter.

Then, after being baked and cooled, they were finished with ginger-rosemary icing.

I decided not to grate but minced ginger for the icing so that you can really enjoy the look and taste of the fresh ginger.

After I had a bite I wanted more rosemary flavor, so I sprinkled some more leaves.

This flavor combo is great for the fall season and also for Christmas.

Recommended beverage – Black tea

I used Nora’s recipe as the base.

Highly recommended.

This year Halloween feels very different.

I’m usually wearing a heavy coat by now, but this year I’m still wearing a summer dress.

In October!

Luckily, I was able to find a beautiful organic Kabocha.

It was small, but…

It was good quality!

Look at this beautiful orange color.

They look good already.

But…

I wanted to dress them up a little….

Cinnamon icing, roasted sunflower seeds, and cinnamon powder were added.

Delicious!!

My husband is not a big fan of scones in general because they are often too dry, but he loved these.

Perfect with black coffee.

I used Ms. Nora’s recipe, and I highly recommend it.

https://www.noracooks.com/pumpkin-scones/

*As noted above I used Kabocha squash in place of pumpkin. Also, I used regular white sugar for brown sugar, flax meal/water for apple sauce, and coconut oil for vegan butter. They still turned out fantastic! I didn’t add any spices to the scones, and I only added cinnamon to my icing.

I started reading this book I had found at a Japanese used bookstore.

It’s an old novel, published in 1973.

It became a bestseller, and a TV show has been made based on this book twice.

I’m really loving having time to read.

Another Kabocha dish.

I made this ginger Kabocha soup the other day for lunch.

It was creamy and so good!

Halloween decorations are everywhere in Bangkok too.

It is nice to see these familiar items this time of the year.

I was in a mood for baking with bananas for a while.

So the timing was perfect!

I received these ripe bananas as part of the surplus set from Happy Grocers.

Now I didn’t have to wait for bananas to ripe.

They were already ripe and ready to be used.

And happy to add that I was able to rescue these guys from being thrown away.

If you are interested in Happy Grocers or their surplus set, check out my post here.

https://sideb.culinarytribune.com/2024/10/03/trying-to-eat-more-sustainably/

I added some cocoa powder to a half of the batter and created the marble design.

These turned out amazing!!

They made the whole kitchen smell so good!

I sprinkled some oats and roasted sunflower seeds on top.

I think they made these muffins even more appropriate for breakfast.

The texture was wonderful, too.

It was pleasantly crispy outside and moist inside.

It’s great as is, but irresistible with my vegan butter!

For the muffins I used this recipe as the base, and it’s a keeper!

https://www.rainbownourishments.com/vegan-banana-muffins/

I can’t believe it has been months since my last post.

Sorry for the absence.

But we were on our winter vacation and out of the country for about two and half months.

We absolutely enjoyed our time in Thailand, Malaysia, and Japan.

I’m sure I will talk about our vacation sometime, but today I want to focus on this beautiful loaf I made.

I was initially planning to make muffins.

But right now the only oven I have access to is our Breville toaster oven, and it was too small for my muffin pan.

So at the last minute, I decided to use my loaf pan while still using a muffin recipe.

I had used my Breville toaster oven before, but mostly for making toasts and not much for baking.

So I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.

I don’t know exactly what was different from my regular oven, but it might be because the smaller size helped give out the heat evenly?

I almost regret I didn’t use it for baking more often before.

You can see how beautifully the crust was browned while the inside stayed perfectly moist.

By the way, the flavor combination of earl grey and blueberries was amazing!

Earl grey always takes everything to the next level.

I used the following recipe as the base.

https://www.egglesscooking.com/vegan-blueberry-muffins/

⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎- I will definitely use this recipe again, but I will be open to trying other recipes, too.

– Good texture

– Good taste

– Not overly sweet

– No special ingredients necessary

*I baked this loaf at 390-395 F for about an hour in my Breville toaster oven.