10 Vegan Breakfast Ideas (#4)

Time for another breakfast round up! I found several savory breakfast options this go-around. Though there are some familiar things here, this also ventures off into some much less traveled roads. Cream of rice? Avocado pudding? Mung bean omelets? Quinoa porridge? Yes, please!

1. Chickpea Scramble

If you're vegan, you've probably scrambled tofu and perhaps chickpea flour, but have you scrambled chickpeas themselves? I found this recipe over at Plant Based Jane and it was delightful--the chickpeas are well seasoned and of course the spinach/mushroom/tomato combo goes with almost everything. It does not taste like eggs, but not every scrambled thing you eat for breakfast needs to be eggy. I rounded it out with the suggested toast and some cubed avocado. This is the kind of breakfast that sticks with me until dinner, which is just what I need on some days.

2. Pumpkin Oatmeal

If you haven't tried my pumpkin oatmeal recipe yet, you really should! It's one of my absolute favorite ways to eat oatmeal--creamy, slightly spicy, and somewhat sweet. What more could you ask for in an oatmeal recipe?

3. Avocado Chocolate Pudding

Last time I did one of these breakfast round ups, I showed you some tofu chocolate pudding. Avocado chocolate pudding is another alternative. I usually make tofu pudding, but this is thick and rich and lends itself to fun toppings (here: hemp hearts and shredded coconut). If you're avoiding soy, this may be a good option for breakfast pudding!

4. Fruit and Yogurt

This is some non-dairy yogurt with chocolate chips, hemp hearts, and shredded coconut and some mango wedges on the side. Yes, Virginia, there is non-dairy yogurt, and a lot of it is perfectly respectable. I didn't know this when I first began my vegan transition, and it was something I thought I'd just have to give up. Non-dairy yogurt tends to cost more, so this is more of an intermittent treat these days, but I do enjoy a good yogurt breakfast now and then.

5. Mung Bean Omelet

There is a product out there I've never tried, Just Egg, that makes a kind of egg batter out of mung beans. It seems to cost an arm and a leg. But it doesn't matter, because mung bean omelets are totally within your reach if you go to the (very small) trouble of making your own mung bean-based egg substitute. I found the recipe at Liv B and knew I had to try it. I loved these! You have to treat the mix more like crepe or pancake batter than eggs, and it won't scramble, but you have tofu and chickpea flour and chickpeas for scrambles so you don't need it to. You can also chop up the omelet for things you'd put scrambled eggs in. This mix is good for lots of things, but the omelet is one of my favorite ways to use it. The texture was so much like I remember from actual omelets, and black salt gave it a great eggy flavor.

6. Quinoa Pumpkin Porridge

"Porridge" was a total mystery to me growing up, but I'm slowly learning about all its wonderful incarnations. (And I think I just didn't know I was eating porridge when I was.) This quinoa pumpkin porridge is found on the Detoxinista website. I add a bit of salt and top my bowls of quinoa porridge with a splash of non-dairy creamer. It's good with or without pecans and the leftovers are still excellent after a quick zap in the microwave. Quinoa is one of those magical foods--a so-called "complete" protein, in plant form. Plus, this will give you something to do with the pumpkin you'll have left over from making my pumpkin oatmeal.

7. Biscuits and Sausage Gravy

Biscuits and gravy was one of my favorite omnivore breakfasts. It's not something I often made at home, if I ever did when home alone--I do have dim memories of making it when staying with my parents, though. I remember eating it every morning on one of my archival research trips in grad school because it was always available on my hotel's breakfast buffet. But it's actually not at all difficult, so I'm happy to have it now on occasion. I use the only vegan biscuit in a can I know of so I don't have to whip up biscuits, although you definitely can whip up vegan biscuits--recipes abound. In any case, I use Pillsbury's Southern Homestyle Original Grands! biscuits, but I make my own sausage gravy. Here, the sausage is Wegman's Don't Be Piggy sausage and the base of this gravy is soy milk. This is not exactly beautiful food, but it's good.

8. Eggy Asparagus Toast

I ran across a recipe called "asparagus on 'eggy' toast" that used chickpea flour to make a kind of a eggy batter that would make asparagus adhere to toast and I immediately knew I had to make it. I made a few errors in judgement, and spread the batter too thick, and baked it (the asparagus didn't really get cooked as much as I'd like that way), and I think using sour dough toast would work better than the plain white sandwich bread I used, so it still needs tweaking. But it was an excellent change of pace and I want to try it with all kinds of veggies now, because chickpea flour is amazing.

9. Maple Cream of Rice with Bananas and Cinnamon

It so happens that Cream of Wheat has a gluten-free cousin: Cream of Rice. Once upon a time, in my truly impoverished days (not to be confused with simply being poor), I got up every morning to a bowl of rice for breakfast. I would still eat lightly sweetened rice with cinnamon, though, if I were in need of a serious struggle meal, because it is kind of nice. This is several steps above that, but the basic flavor is kind of a blank slate for whatever you want it to be. Here, I topped my cream of rice with sliced bananas, maple syrup, and cinnamon, and it was delightful. It's not as much of a struggle meal as plain steamed rice with cinnamon and sugar and a bit of margarine if you're lucky and have some around, but it will still be cheaper than many things. This would probably cost you about 75 cents per bowl (less if you use brown sugar rather than maple syrup).

10. Peaches and Cream Pancakes

Take your favorite basic pancake recipe. Top it with peach compote and some coconut whipped topping. Peach compote is simple--this was just frozen peaches, a bit of water, some sugar, and some corn starch cooked until thickened, and then I added some vanilla. This is easy, but so decadent! The coconut whipped topping melts into the hot peaches and pancakes and makes a kind of syrup all its own.