by : Reiko Breakfast, Vegan, Vegetarian

Almond Pancakes with Fresh Blueberries
アーモンドパンケーキ

Now we have non-dairy butter, and I thought it was time to put pancakes on the table for the weekend breakfast.

Terry and I both like thin pancakes, so that’s what I made.

Light and fluffy.

Don’t forget coffee.

So glad that Terry just made a new batch of cold-brew.

Fresh blueberries.

People usually add blueberries to the pancake batter, but I like my berries fresh.

Maple syrup is a must!

The pancakes are ready!

Since these are so thin, it doesn’t take too long to cook.

And I take my homemade vegan butter out.

This is a post to show off my butter as well as my pancakes.

Can you tell this vegan butter melts perfectly?

How I take my blueberries?

Fresh please.

And lots of them.

Almond Pancakes with Fresh Blueberries

1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup almond meal
1 tablespoon flaxseed meal
3 tablespoon cane sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup grated apple
1 1/2 cup soy milk
1 tablespoon canola oil

canola oil for cooking

1/3~1/2 cup fresh blueberries
homemade vegan butter
maple syrup

1. Combine all the ingredients.
2. Lightly coat the griddle surface with oil. Cook pancakes for a few minutes each side.
3. Serve with fresh blueberries, vegan butter, and maple syrup.

by : Reiko Breakfast, Dessert, Nuts, Vegan, Vegetarian

Cardamom Banana Bread with Walnuts
胡桃たっぷりカルダモンバナナブレッド

Buying bananas can be tricky.

I used to buy a bunch of 5 or 6 bananas at a time.

I would wait for a few days for them to ripe.

But then they would ripen at the same time and I would end up with six bananas that need to be eaten fairly quickly.

So now I buy a small bunch, typically two or three, so they are more manageable.

But things don’t always go as planned, and this weekend I ended up with two overripe bananas.

I tend to like my bananas to be young and slightly underripe to eat as they are to begin with, so these were way over beyond being my perfect bananas.

What do you do?

Well, I felt that making a banana bread was the only solution to this situation.

A good thing about banana bread is that it’s so easy to make.

I don’t know about others, but I just combine all the ingredients in one bowl, so it doesn’t take much time before it goes into the oven.

The bread turned out awesome!

The outside is nice and crunchy and the inside is perfectly dense and moist.

I should have waited for a little longer to let it cool down a little bit, but I was so ready to taste it.

It was so delicious!!

The only downside is that Terry doesn’t care for anything banana, so it was all for me (did I say it’s a downside?! lol).

I enjoyed my first slice with cafe au lait, and that was a great snack.

The cardamom flavor is definitely there and as it always does, it adds some exotic and sophisticated flavor.

My banana bread is full of chunky walnut pieces.

Cardamom Banana Bread with Walnuts

2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
cardamom
2 overripe bananas
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup canola oil
1 tablespoon ground flax seeds
2 tablespoons water
1/2 teaspoon rum
about 1 cup walnuts

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.
2. Combine all the ingredients.
3. Pour the batter to a parchment paper lined loaf pan (3x3x7.5 inch pan).
4. Bake for about 45 minutes to 1 hour, or a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Have a great rest of the weekend, everyone!

It’s a cloudy Sunday here in MN.

by : Reiko Bread, Breakfast, Vegan, Vegetarian

Chocolat Bread
ショコラブレッド

This chocolat bread is messy, decadent, and heavenly delicious.

I was watching a show called, “The Best thing I Ever Ate” on Food Network, and Berkshire’s Bread &
Chocolate was being featured as part of their “Messy” best thing episode.

Just looking at the lady eating the bread with her fingers covered with melty chocolate made me almost drool (lol).

So “make my own chocolat bread” got on my to-do list for the weekend.

I wanted to use good quality chocolate for this.

So I went to the rather higher-end grocery store in our neighborhood and found Madecasse chocolate discs.

What the package said was promising, and it turned out that I was very happy with the purchase.

Chocolate is the main player here, so you have to use good quality chocolate.

I tried to put as much chocolate as possible in the dough.

And this was what it looked like before going into the oven.

You can see some chocolate disks are peeking out at some spots.

(The one in the back is cranberry walnut bread.)

Very exciting moment.

Just out of the oven, and looks really good.

This messiness was exactly what I was hoping for!

I usually wait to cut my bread until it cools down, but this one, you don’t want to wait too long.

Slice and taste it when it’s still warm.

Who can resist this, right?!

This turned out to be an awesome breakfast bread.

Who said you can’t have chocolate for breakfast.

For some reason it seemed very appropriate, especially when served with a cup of black coffee.

Chocolat Bread – makes 2

*This is NOT Berkshire’s recipe. Their Bread & Chocolate is sourdough based, and this recipe is NOT.

about 100 ml lukewarm water
1/2~3/4 tablespoon kosher salt
1/2 tablespoon dry yeast
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
about 1~2 cups good quality chocolate disks or chips
1 cup boiling water

1. In a tall container combine water, salt, and yeast. Mix well until the salt and yeast dissolve.
2. Add flour. Mix well with a wooden spoon or a hand. The dough should be rather loose.
3. Cover and let rise until doubled for about 2 hours.
4. Refrigerate the dough overnight; easier to form.
5. Divide the dough into two. Roll them flat. Place chocolate chips/discs. Make flat balls.
6. Place a pizza stone in the middle of the oven and a small oven(high temperature)-safe dish on another rack. Preheat the oven to 450F. Wait for 20 minutes.
7. Place the dough on the pizza stone. Pour 1 cup boiling water into the small dish; be careful, the water will splash.
8. Bake for 25~30 minutes.

Have an awesome Sunday everyone!

by : Reiko Breakfast, Vegan, Vegetarian

Breakfast Fruit Nachos
朝食フルーツ・ナチョス

Who said you can’t snack in the morning?

When I have beautiful fruit like this, I want to start the day eating lots of it!

I cut them into small pieces.

Easy to scoop up with chips this way.

Here is the first layer.

Looks like a wreath.

Tortilla chips made with stone ground white corn, red quinoa, and black beans.

We always have several different kinds of chips in our house.

Terry is sort of an expert to spot good chips wherever we go for grocery shopping.

A drizzle of cashew cream and sunflower butter and fruit were placed between layers and on top.

This was such a great idea!

How fun is it you get to eat breakfast with hands?!

I didn’t think I was that hungry, but Terry and I devoured this.

Each bite is absolutely perfectly delicious.

Even though it looks like a snack, this breakfast is nutrition-packed with all the fresh fruit!

I drizzled a little maple syrup at the end, but it can be optional.

I spotted this mug at Anthropologie, and fell in love with the colors and the design.

This is my new mug, and this one is Terry’s.

One of the things in cups (and bowls, too) I look for is some design inside the cup (or bowl).

And this mug passes the test.

Breakfast fruit Nachos

cashew cream “cheese”
– 1/2 cup cashew nuts
– hot water to cover the nuts
– fresh lemon juice from 1/2 lemon
– about 1 tablespoon sugar
– salt
tortilla chips; I used Trader Joe’s Quinoa Black Bean chips
1/4 cup sunflower butter
2 cups chopped fruit; I used mango, banana, grapes, cherries, and blueberris
fresh mint

1. Make cashew cream “cheese”. Put nuts in a tall container. Add hot water to cover the nuts. Let them soak for at least about 15 minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients. Puree until smooth using a hand blender.
2. Place chips on a plate. Drizzle the cashew cream “cheese” and sunflower butter. Sprinkle some fruit.
3. Place another layer of chips. Drizzle the cashew cream and sunflower butter. Place a pile of fruit in the middle. Sprinkle fresh mint leaves.

by : Reiko Bread, Breakfast, Vegan, Vegetarian

SB & F Open Sandwich
SB & F オープンサンド

You may be wondering what SB and F stand for.

Well, we probably have to talk about PB & J first.

I’m not a huge fan of peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I do like peanut butter but jelly makes the whole sandwich a bit too sweet, and I feel like something is missing… freshness, maybe.

So, as you can see in this post, I like to add fresh fruit.

In this particular post I used jelly but I usually leave jelly out, so my PB & J is technically more like PB & F: peanut butter and fruit.

This time instead of peanut butter I used sunflower butter, so that’s where the name comes from.

Sunflower butter and fruit, SB & F.

It’s like a cousin of PB & F (lol).

This was my first time to try sunflower butter.

One of my Instagram friends posts a lot of pictures with sunflower butter, and that inspired me to try it.

It’s very creamy, and my first impression was “it tastes like sunflower seeds!”

The flavor is unique (a bit milder or more sophisticated? than peanut butter), and it is a great addition to my small nut butter collections.

So just because I wanted to try this new butter, I baked bread.

This is 2/3 whole wheat bread (2/3 of the flour used was whole wheat flour: 1 (all purpose flour): 2(whole wheat flour).

I usually hesitate to buy strawberries because there are wide variables in the taste quality, and I have been unlucky coming home with almost tasteless strawberries often recently.

But finally luck was with me, and these strawberries were so sweet!

I generously spread the sunflower butter on the toasted bread slices.

Aren’t these open sandwiches pretty?

This makes a perfect breakfast.

I enjoyed the sandwich with a cup of coffee.

I just bought this mug, and I absolutely love it.

It’s from Anthropologie.

SB & F Open Sandwich

– 2 toasts
– 2 tablespoons sunflower butter
– fruit; I used a banana and strawberries

1. Spread sunflower butter on toasts.
2. Place fruit on top.

by : Reiko Breakfast, Leaf Vegetabes, Potato/Squash, Tofu, Vegan, Vegetarian

Breakfast Wrap
朝食ラップ

It may be a bit hard to see the wrap, but it’s there.

I’ve been really enjoying wraps lately.

Especially these whole wheat wraps are so tasty.

It took me a while to get used to whole wheat food, but they have finally started growing on me.

Lately I’ve been choosing darker colors over lighter colors (e.g., whole wheat vs. regular flour) for food, so my choice was easy when I was out shopping for potatoes.

Yep, sweet potatoes.

The potatoes were coated with a mixture of olive oil, maple syrup, cinnamon, and paprika.

The potatoes were placed on a sheet pan and then salt and pepper were sprinkled before going into the oven.

I typically do not like a mushy texture of vegetables, so I roasted my potatoes at the temperature (425F), probably a bit higher than how people typically roast their potatoes.

They turned out just the way I wanted.

They got a nice slightly caramelized crust outside and the inside was tender but not mushy or too wet.

A breakfast wrap!

This is “before” being wrapped, apparently.

But this way you can see what was inside.

On the wrap are sauteed spinach and kale, roasted spiced sweet potatoes, and scrambled tofu.

It’s a little tight, but you can wrap it. No problem!

And this awesome home cold-brewed coffee makes the breakfast even better.

Tear a small piece, and make a tiny wrap for each bite.

It’s a fun way to eat a wrap.

Breakfast Wrap　

2 whole wheat wraps
roasted spiced sweet potatoes
– 1/4 cup olive oil
– 1/4 cup maple syrup
– paprika
– cinnamon
– 4~5 sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into bite-sized cubes
– salt and pepper
scrambled tofu
– 1 package extra firm tofu, microwaved for about one minute and remove excess water
– canola oil
– salt and pepper
– cumin
– turmeric
1~2 cups sauteed and salted/peppered kale and spinach1. Make roasted sweet potatoes. Preheat the oven to 425F. In a bowl mix olive oil, maple syrup, paprika, and cinnamon. Add sweet potatoes and coat the potatoes with the oil mixture. Place the potatoes on a sheet pan in a single layer. Salt and pepper. Roast in the oven for about 20~25 minutes, or until cooked through.
2. Make scrambled tofu. Roughly mash tofu with a wooden spoon. Sautee the tofu in oil. Salt and pepper. Add cumin and turmeric. Mix well and continue to sautee for another few more minutes.
3. Warm wraps on a pan over high heat for a minute or so each side.
4. Place sauteed kale and spinach, roasted sweet potatoes, and scrambled tofu over wraps.

2 Comments