A New Kind of Breakfast

TOFU "SCRAMBLED EGGS"

Breakfast has always been my favorite meal of the day.
I miss cooking a full corned beef brisket for St. Patrick's Day. Not so much for the corned beef and cabbage, but for the five pounds of corned beef hash and poached eggs I make the next day. (That stuff you buy in the cans at the supermarket? That can't be corned beef! That's not something anyone on earth would make if they tasted mine!) I miss Eggs Benedict with Hollandaise sauce and a Western omlette with cheese from the Ritz Diner. Bickford's Baby Dutch Apple pancakes, Morin's banana praline waffles and Coco Lopez banana bread french toast with pineapple sauce (yummy!!!). My sour cream and pumpkin pancakes in the fall with warm Mrs. Butterworth's pouring over the edges. Danish made from scratch. Warm blueberry scones and cinnamon buns. Homemade crepes with brown sugar that my grandmother showed me how to make. Buttered toast, french toast, toast points dipped in egg yolks! All the thousands of breakfasts I've cooked, prepared and served, as well as the ones I've made at home. I miss all of it--and yet I had to move on. My weight was beginning to approach critical mass. I was having trouble completing a sentence without losing my breath. My blood pressure was high and on the rise again. I was getting beet red climbing a flight of stairs! My doctor was prescribing more pills. More quick fixes. I was already spending about $150 dollars a month on pills. I had to make a fundamental change in the way I approached the things I could eat for breakfast. I felt like I was primed and ready for a heart attack.
Donna and I decided that going vegan for breakfast would be a good start. But where to begin???
We started buying vegan cookbooks, but the breakfast sections are the smallest chapters. Many of the breads and muffins are dry, and get stale quickly (properties that real eggs prevent in the normal baking process.)
I was actually already a big fan of oatmeal. Whenever I ate it, I was never hungry until lunch time. I never snacked or felt the urge to nibble, until about 12 noon. Oatmeal seemed a logical first choice. So Donna and I began eating oatmeal every morning. I had to say goodbye to the light cream I used to use with it, now we were using soy milk. I came to find that soy products in some forms (like soy milk) kill me with gas, so I switched to rice milk. Bingo! I was still no longer hungry until lunch time, but we felt like we were eating healthier already. On a jaunt to Trader Joe's, we picked up some of their dried blueberries. They are simply the best on the market, even better than what I can buy wholesale. We started adding them to granola, and heating them with our oatmeal in the microwave. It gave a whole new character to the oatmeal, fruity, but still healthy. In time, we would experiment with sauteed apples, pears, and other fruits. But the blueberry oatmeal helped our taste buds progress to a point where we could begin trying other dishes. But after a few weeks of oatmeal, we were getting bored. We began experimenting with cream of wheat, cream of rice, and granola with soy yogurt (pass the Beano first !!!) . These items were satisfying, but lacking in the excitement category.
On a trip to Manhattan to visit our oldest son, Rick, we visited a vegan restaurant called The Candle Cafe. The menu was an eye-opener for us because they combined traditional lunch and dinner items with tofu scrambled eggs in a breakfast wrap. I was intrigued with the Southwest Scramble with peppers, onions, salsa, and cilantro, along with the Tofu "scrambled eggs" pictured above. They had Italian wraps with vegan "meats" , Indian platters with hummus and taboule--for breakfast?!? Miso soup and soba noodle salad at 9 am ??? Wheatgrass shakes? Tazo Raspberry Iced Tea instead of coffee? The place was packed with thin people (we looked enormous compared to most of the patrons) . They have been doing vegan food for a long time, so they were as comfortable producing their fare, as I am catering a menu I've done for 20 years. Obviously, to get some enjoyment out of our breakfasts, they were going to have to be a little out of the ordinary. Donna and I were energized again with new ideas.
We returned home and enthusiastically began frying tofu "eggs." I recreated my version of the southwest tofu scramble with a toasted bagel and tri-color homefries. A new passion was born. Sure, I can't quite turn them into a classical French omlette, but I have done versions with vine ripe tomatoes and spinach, mushrooms and vegan swiss cheese, and a curried version which was quite satisfying.
Every now and then, I still miss my western omelette with cheese, but the temptation to make it is fading like nicotine from an ex-smoker. Now we look forward to toasted bagels with tofu cream cheese, sliced vine ripe tomatoes, and basil chiffonade over the top. We never would have eaten a breakfast like that 5 years ago, but today we're game to try almost anything.
It really is a new kind of breakfast!