Vegan 'till 6: Savory Vegan Breakfast part 2

Here’s a really easy vegan dish that I often eat for breakfast. This is so simple that most people wouldn’t bother writing about it. But here it is: not sexy but delicious.

Spinach with couscous

I don’t have exact amounts here but I’ll give some guidelines.

Begin by making the couscous which you can do if you can boil water. Simply bring 2 cups of water to a boil and add 1 cup of couscous. Turn down the heat and cook, covered, for 1 minute. Turn off heat but leave pan undisturbed for at least 5 minutes. The resulting 2 cups of couscous will make 2 to 3 servings of the recipe below and will also keep well in the refrigerator. To reheat simply add a couple of tablespoons of cold water to the couscous to break up any lumps before adding to the pan.

Take one of those bags of pre-washed spinach and put it in your salad spinner and wash it again, trust me on this. Spin off almost all of the water but don’t let it get bone dry. Figure one bag per serving. This will seem like a lot of spinach until you’ve cooked this once.

Heat some olive oil in an 8” or 10” skillet whichever you have. How much oil? I usually count out 2 Mississippi’s while pouring from the bottle. Add a couple of cloves of garlic to the oil when it gets hot. You can either just lightly crush the garlic, let it flavor the oil and remove it when it gets golden or you can finely chop the garlic and eat it with the spinach. This is your preference. I like eating garlic in the morning but I can understand if you don’t. You can also add some crushed red pepper flakes with the garlic, or you can omit them. Again, this depends on whether you like a little spice in the morning.

Before the garlic burns add the spinach to the pan along with a generous pinch of kosher salt. Move the spinach around and watch as it shrinks away to a fraction of its original size. When it’s done shrinking and most of the liquid has cooked away add the couscous. Stir to combine and remove from heat. I like to add a splash of balsamic vinegar and a drizzle of good olive oil. Plate, eat and pat yourself on the back for starting the day off right.

Like the bulgur I wrote about earlier this will fill you up and keep you going till lunch. Always make sure to eat lunch or you’ll be ravenous at dinner and prone to making bad food choices.

Also like bulgur buy your couscous from the bulk bin in the store and not from the box. You will save significantly on the cost without sacrificing any quality.

Vegan 'till 6: Savory Vegan Breakfast

Let me start with a basic assumption: you’re here because of Mark Bittman. You’ve read about the theory Bittman puts forth in his book Food Matters that first, our appetite for animal products is killing the planet and second, our appetite for animal products is killing us. I’ll go into this further in posts to follow but for now just say that I buy into this premise. I’ve adopted a basic idea from Bittman, that of eating vegan until dinner and then eating a sensible meal that de-emphasizes meat but does not exclude it and/or other animal products. I wanted to write about some of the strategies I’m using to help follow this plan.

The idea of eating a savory vegan breakfast has been the key to making vegan ‘till 6 work for me. You may have heard Bittman interviewed on NPR not too long ago describing how you could eat oatmeal with soy sauce and scallions for breakfast. You can go to the NY Times website and watch a video of Mark making this dish with wheat berries instead of oatmeal but the idea is the same. Wheat berries are probably a better choice but oatmeal is much better as an attention grabber. Below, find another breakfast idea which will help you get started.

I really like bulgur with nothing more than olive oil and salt. I buy bulgur in bulk from both Whole Foods and Wegman’s here in NJ. The cost is minimal this way, much cheaper than buying it boxed with a spice packet that you’d end up throwing away.

You cook bulgur much like rice in ratio of 2 parts water to 1 part bulgur. Combine ingredients, bring to a boil in a covered saucepan and then turn the heat down to low so you can just see wisps of steam escaping from the pot lid. Cook for 18 minutes then turn off the heat and leave the pot alone for another 10 minutes at which time you should have 2 cups of perfectly cooked bulgur. Fluff up with a fork and place about half a cup in a bowl. Add a small amount of your best olive oil and a pinch of kosher salt and eat.

Cooked bulgur keeps great in a sealed container in the refrigerator. To reheat put the desired portion in a bowl, add a tiny amount of tap water, stir to moisten and then microwave uncovered for about 2 minutes. This works for me every time. Keep in mind that your microwave will perform differently than mine so you may need to play around with the reheating time.

I’ve developed some other good savory breakfast recipes which I’ll share in the next few days. Feel free to post a comment or drop me an email.

A word about links: I could provide links to things mentioned in this post but I think that everyone can Google anything they find interesting on their own. For instance, I could give you a link to Amazon to buy the Bittman book which I encourage you go do but I don’t think you need my help to do that.