Saturday, August 10 Tofu Benedict Breakfast Rating: 4.75

Every now and then, we like to make a bit of a fancy breakfast. Since I couldn’t remember the last time we’d made tofu benedict, I decided it was time. Normally, I make fresh English muffins the night before (Vegan Brunch recipe), but we had some store-bought ones on hand so we used those instead. Non-homemade muffins aside, you still have to plan this ahead of time since the tofu needs to marinate overnight. There are several recipes out there for the marinated tofu and hollandaise sauce, and they’re mostly more or less the same. The first one we ever tried was this one in Vegetarian Times from a few years ago. We don’t use the asparagus and morels in the recipe as it's written, just some sautéed spinach and sometimes sliced tomato. It’s also kind of fun to garnish with a grape tomato – they end up looking like eyes, or, uh, boobs. We were out of those, so a nice sprinkle of smoked paprika would have to do instead. Since we had a plethora of potatoes, we also gleefully made some oven-baked hashbrowns. I don’t use a recipe, but the one in the Happy Herbivore cookbook is a good one if you’re not inclined to wing it. I just chop up the potatoes, spray them with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper, then bake them until they're crispy. I also like to add some chopped onion to the baking sheet about halfway through cooking. A couple of slices of tempeh bacon (we like Fakin’ Bacon) round out the meal, unless you’re having this a little later, calling it brunch and having a mimosa, in which case the cocktail rounds out the meal.