I am the King of Breakfast - And other stories.

This is Jason, and I think after 31 years I have finally decided that Breakfast is likely my favorite meal.

Well, maybe sometimes dinner.

Or lunch if its, like, the Loving Hut Buffet.

But more often than in the past, Breakfast is my favorite meal (on the weekends when I'm not rushed.)

ROUND ONE

All distinctions aside, this weekend I went a little cray, starting on Saturday morning when I woke up with a plan.  My band was recording a little demo that day and I didn't have a ton of time, but I wanted to eat something that would keep  me going (that wasn't Morning Soup - my normal fall back).  I banked on Frittata and biscuits to keep me full (it worked until like 3pm, which is kind of a long time).

Frittata, like a lot of recipes, is very different depending on where you have it.  In my family, we eat it Easter morning, and it is a big bowl of eggs and sausage and things not formally held together in any kind of shape.  In Gina's family it is more like a quiche without the crust.

The version I made was more like Gina's fam's.

Italian in origin, Frittata is a term for cooking eggs on a skillet.  Actually, in reading about it on Wikipedia, Gina's family's way of making it is actually the way its supposed to be done.

Basically you mix a bunch of stuff up with eggs, cook it in a pan for a while, the invert the cooked mixture onto a plate and VOILA!  You have a Frittata that you can cut up and distribute to your hungry family.

In place of eggs I used tofu.  The recipe was from Vegan Brunch and believe me, it is not your grandmother's Frittata.  It was tofu kneaded until it was the consistency of ricotta, then I sauteed garlic and cups of finely chopped cauliflower until browned.  I added these to the tofu along with nutritional yeast, soy sauce and lemon juice, and a small carrot grated in, and 2 tablespoons of curry power and a little cumin - and then mixed it well.  The mixture was then pressed into a pie pan and baked for 20 minutes.

When I took it out, the top was slightly browned:

I let it cool for about 10 minutes.  In the meantime I made biscuits in the toaster oven.  You heard me.  The Toaster.  Oven.

Then I inverted the Frittata onto a plate, like so:

The final product looked like this - all in about 35 minutes tops:

While I ate it, I tried to imagine that this was what Led Zeppelin always ate before recording and then gave up.

That was Breakfast #1 of the weekend.

ROUND TWO (Breakfast born from bitterness)

 Round two - I woke up Sunday morning, sat in the living room watching it snow and thought with bitter envy at how a little over a year ago this would have been the perfect day to go to the Quiet Storm, or gather up a crew and head to Zenith.
I thought about our options.  Bob's Diner, Eat n' Park, Central Grill, First Watch.  They all amounted to the exact same meal in a different setting (at variably different prices):  Oatmeal, toast (if you beg them not to pre-butter it) and homefries.

And this Saturday, that just would do.  I broke out Vegan Brunch yet again thinking there had to be something in there that would save us from oatmeal.

Gina was still sleeping when I started to chop up the potatoes.  She awoke around the time the water was starting to boil.  I threw on the album Father, Son, Holy Ghost by Girls and cranked it.  It was Sunday, after all.

Around the time I was straining the boiled potatoes and beginning to mash them with a big fork, I had finished the Girls album and was blasting and singing along to Hi, Everything's Great by Limbeck.  This was the soundtrack while added to the mixing bowl nutritional yeast, lemon juice, breadcrumbs, and 16 ounces of thawed frozen mustard greens.  I pressed all this down into a greased 9 x 13 inch baking pan and covered the top with more breadcrumbs and some smoked paprika.  That sucker was then baked for 30 minutes.

This probably would have been enough for a meal but I was defiant.  I wanted freaking Quiet Storm soysauge and I was going to have it dammit.

I threw on Dinosaur Junior's Green Mind album while I set up the steamer.  Then I mashed up some cannellinni beans, mixed in vital wheat gluton, soy sauce, vegetable broth, fennel seeds, oregano and basil, salt and pepper, more nutritional yeast and mixed it up into a dough ball.  I divided the dough ball into four deliciously smelling parts and rolled them in tin foil, plopped them into the steamer and let them steam for 40 minutes.

I also heated up the left over Frittata from saturday.

This is the potato/mustard green thing when done:

And here's the whole freakin' plate
:

And Angels wept.

So while I was blogging this tonight, Gina was busy at work making what will become our lunch tomorrow (and probably dinner or more lunch the rest of the week)

She will have to tell you more about its story but here is a picture.  I cant wait for lunch tomorrow!  I know that it has broccoli in it, and quinoa, and cheddar daiya (because I bought the ingredients) but I dont know much else about it's preparation.  It smells awesome:

And Fin.