MoFo day 1: Rise and Shine it's breakfast time!

 Alas my plan to blog through August was thwarted by a faulty camera battery charger and now a broken laptop cord. Thankfully I’m able to use Jeremy’s computer, and I’ve replaced the camera charger so I can participate in Vegan MoFo! This is my second year and I’m really looking forward to reading everyone else’s posts!! I won’t have a set theme like I did last year which is a little sad,  I had such fun wondering though the culinary world of Harry Potter last year but the daily post prompts made a set theme a tad tricky. So we are going with the flow and who knows maybe we will work in a few wizarding posts that we didn’t get to last year.

Day one!  Rise and Shine its breakfast time! Peppers and “Eggs”(Tofu scramble) sandwiches and sausage. Everyone loves this, when Jeremy is home we usually have hash browns also.  In full disclosure we more often than not have oat meal and fruit, savory oats, congee (wonderful recipe in Kathy Hester’s cookbook  OATrageous Oatmeal ) or even leftovers –my favorite is soup for breakfast.  Something like this would be reserved for a weekend brunch or even for Dinner. That said the girls and Jeremy would happily have this many times a week. Some other variations are blueberry pancakes/waffles, the sausage, and spicy country potatoes-or- a fully loaded garden chickpea omelet, the sausage (Are you seeing a common theme?) and country potatoes.   

 I’m not going to give an actual recipe for the eggs and peppers I’m still adjusting the spice to get it right but I am including the recipe for our sausages I hope you like them as much as we do!!

Our favorite breakfast sausage.

 ~Makes about 7 english muffin sized patties.

Ingredients:

• ½ c. TVP
• ½ c. Boiling water
• ½ tsp. Better Than Bouillon vegetable base –optional
• ½ c. Oats ground into flour
• ½ tsp. Fennel Seeds
• ½ c. Quick Oats
• 2Tbsp. Nutritional Yeast
• 1 tsp. Garlic Powder
• ½ -1 ½ tsp. Rubbed Sage
• ¼ tsp. Black Pepper
• ¼ tsp. Salt
• 1/8-1/4 tsp. Cayenne
• ½ tsp. Liquid Smoke
• 3 tbsp. Tamari
• 1 Tbsp. Maple Syrup
• 1 tsp. Kitchen Banquet and browning sauce
• oil for frying

Method:

1. Add ½ cup TVP into a medium bowl. Boil ½ cup water, stir in ½ tsp vegetable base, remove from heat and pour over tvp. Let sit 5 minutes.

2. While TVP is sitting add a generous ½ cup of oats and the fennel seeds to a blender and blend until a smooth flour.

3. Add remaining ingredients aside from the oats and oat flour to the bowl with the TVP. Mix well. Add oats and the oat flour, if you are not a huge fan of sage start with the lower amount and add more to taste, we use the full amount  mix well. It will be a sticky paste (2^nd picture in collage).

4. Add oil to pan, enough to plan fry. As you can see in the bottom collage picture I went over board that was pretty wasteful and I normally don’t use near that much oil, BUT use however much you wish. 

5. Turn the pan on medium/high. And form patties to whatever size you like,it helps if you have a little cup of water to moisten you fingers to prevent the mix from sticking to you and not the patty.  You can also make little link shapes but you need to be careful when flipping that they don’t fall apart. Add to the pan as they are made, in the bottom picture you can see how brown I let mine go before flipping these are not burned at all, if you leave out the browning sauce from the mix err on the side of caution and flip sooner, as this really does effect the color of the finished sausage.

Set on a plate w/ paper towel until all the patties have been cooked. Enjoy!!  

See you all tomorrow!

Post 11; Hagrid's Fire cooked Sausages

Harry looked up at the giant. He meant to say thank you, but the words got lost on the way to his mouth, and what he said instead was,"Who are you?"

    The giant chuckled.

    "True, I haven't introduced meself. Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts."

 He held out an enormous hand and shook Harry's whole arm.
  "What about that tea then, eh?" he said, rubbing his hands together. "I'd not say no ter summat stronger if yeh've got it,mind."

                His eyes fell on the empty grate with the shriveled chip bags in it and he snorted. He bent down over the fireplace; they couldn't see what he was doing but when he drew back a second later, there was a roaring fire there. It filled the whole damp hut with flickering light and Harry felt the warmth wash over him as though he'd sunk into a hot bath.

The giant sat back down on the sofa, which sagged under his weight, and began taking all sorts of things out of the pockets of his coat: a copper kettle, a squashy package of sausages, a poker, a teapot, several chipped mugs, and a bottle of some amber liquid that he took a swig from before starting to make tea. Soon the hut was full of the sound and smell of sizzling sausage. Nobody said a thing while the giant was working, but as he slid the first six fat, juicy, slightly burnt sausages from the poker, Dudley fidgeted a little. Uncle Vernon said sharply, "Don't touch anything he gives you, Dudley."

    The giant chuckled darkly.

    "Yet great puddin' of a son don' need fattenin' anymore, Dursley, don' worry."

    He passed the sausages to Harry, who was so hungry he had never tasted anything so wonderful, but he still couldn't take his eyes off the giant. Finally, as nobody seemed about to explain anything, he said, "I'm sorry, but I still don't really know who you are." –Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone chapter 4 The Keeper of the Keys.

Labor day weekend we went camping ,  with Mofo just around the corner I knew I wanted to take the opportunity  to make some open fire cooked sausages we went armed with Tofurky Kielbasa And Field Roast Frankfurters.   The first night J and the girls  set up camp and started a fire while  I got to cooking.  Diced up potatoes, and sliced the kielbasa into little half rounds the potatoes were spiced with garlic powder black pepper and salt they kept sticking to the pan ( I forgot the lid and the oil) so we added water after the earth balance lost its ability to keep the spuds from sticking. The Kielbasa was cooked separate so it would brown up a bit and added it at the end.  We also had grilled broccoli and had some savory tea which I'll probably write about separately another time.

It was our first time having those and while they were perfectly edible they certainly weren’t my favorite veg sausage. I doubt we would buy again unless J or the girls really wanted them.

 

V and the first Lake Superior Agate she found.

The girls and I attempting to "swim" and  find Agates. TOO cold!

 

Smores,  because camping.

 There was the required camp stories, and shenanigans that accompany a camp out and then sleep. Yowza did it get COLD. I woke up at 3am and shivered till 6am. Everyone else slept though it but wow.

At first light it was breathtaking! 

Morning Rock hunt.

 

Morning Frolic

Fog bow.

 This was exciting! I'd never seen anything like a fog bow before I WISH I'd had my camera so I could share with you what it really looked like the the phone only caught half of it. I actually did have my camera but forgot the card at home.*sob*  We didn't know what it was and at the time called it a white rainbow. Wiki fog bow

My loves.

Hunting! J found green stone, the rest of us found agates :)

Frankfurters roasting.

Baked beans!

Yum! Frankfurters are much better!! Also potato topped with beans.

A last attempt to swim this was as far as they got.

We were supposed to stay another two nights but thunderstorms were called for and they did come so we packed it all in  and went home.  We saw two bald headed eagles and an osprey but we weren't quick enough to get a picture. It was beautiful! I'd have like to have borrowed Perkins tent with the wood stoves inside but this worked well enough and no muggles found us out!