Alex is in the kitchen this month:

Breakfast in this vegan household is very simple but very delicious. We all live under the call of muesli. It’s perfect, packed with fiber and vitamins, and endlessly personalizable. You can add any fruit, and any milk or yogurt that your heart desires. It’s so deeply ingrained (see, a muesli joke) that after I went on a two-week vacation to the UK and indulged in a full English breakfast each day — eggs, sausages and bacon, mushrooms, beans, toast — when I finally got back to New Hampshire, I kissed the muesli jar. I’ve never been more attached to a breakfast dish.

Muesli is a healthy and filling way to eat from your pantry, but you should have a few staples to sprinkle on top to maximize its benefits. I am a strong proponent of stocking up on these ingredients and storing them in your pantry: pumpkin seeds, ground flax, walnuts, unsweetened shredded coconut, hemp and chia.

Add these to muesli with fruit (fresh or thawed from frozen), and you’ll be full and happy until lunch. If you’re interested in learning more about stocking your pantry, try the “Getting Started” webpage on the Harris Center’s website: harriscenter.org/rhp/getting-started.

However, women cannot live on muesli alone. Sometimes we all deserve a luxurious treat, a savory snack or a fabulous brunch. That can be hard if you’re trying to be plant-based at breakfast, because the quintessential American one is a savory helping of eggs and meat.

On weekends, our household makes a big tofu scramble, which is quick, filling and makes for great leftovers during the week. But I’ve been wanting to stretch my breakfast-making muscles, and developed this tofu frittata that allows for all the goodness of the garden. It’s also endlessly personalizable; you can play around with the vegetables you add. You can also halve the tofu eggs if you’d rather make more of an omelet. The latter is quicker to cook on the stovetop than a frittata.

In this recipe, I use garlic scapes, one of the first bounties of the summer garden. If you’ve planted garlic, at some point you’ll see a shoot start to curl into a loop. You can use scissors to snip it at the highest leaf. You want to do this early, because if the loop straightens out, that means more energy is going to the garlic flower than the garlic bulb. The scape gives a more delicate garlic flavor, so add more if you’re a garlic fiend, like me.

Tofu Frittata

Ingredients

Tofu eggs

  • 1 pound firm tofu
  • ⅔ cup chickpea flour
  • ⅔ cup almond milk
  • 2 teaspoons mustard
  • 4 tablespoons nutritional yeast
  • ¼ teaspoon turmeric
  • Salt and pepper

Vegetable mix

  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 garlic scapes (or one garlic clove), chopped
  • Handful of kale, chopped
  • 1 pepper, chopped
  • ½ red onion, chopped
  • 5 cremini or bella mushrooms
  • Handful of tomatoes
  • 1 teaspoon black garlic salt
  • Chives, for garnish

Instructions

  1. Heat a large, oven-safe pan over medium heat. Add olive oil.
  2. Add the tofu eggs ingredients to a blender and mix until smooth. Set aside.
  3. Add garlic scapes, red onion and mushrooms to the pan. Season with a little black garlic salt and cook until the mushrooms get a bit browned, about 3-5 minutes.
  4. Add pepper and tomatoes to the pan and sauté 2-3 minutes until soft.
  5. Add kale and some chives, and sauté for another 2 minutes.
  6. Pour the tofu eggs over the vegetables until covering the entire pan. Keep the heat on medium and cook for 15 minutes, until you see the tofu eggs firming up. Preheat the oven on broil. After 15 minutes on the stove, put the pan under the broiler until the eggs are firm. Cut and serve.

For more information on how your food choices affect the planet and your health, go to: harriscenter.org/rhp