Birthday Brinner!

My birthday was a couple of weeks ago, and my mom sent me an email asking what I wanted to do to celebrate... a family dinner, or maybe a family brunch? Well, I love brunch food more than just about anything in the whole world, but that particular weekend, I was busy both mornings. Shucks. Just when I started to feel the possibility of delicious brunchy goodness slipping away from me - I had a stroke of genius: Birthday Brinner!

We already know that Breakfast for Dinner is one of the great privledges of adulthood, and so I guess demanding that the whole entire family have Breakfast for Dinner is one of the great privleges of turning 42. Ha! 

 my contributions!

So, my wonderful family assembled and together we ate pancakes and OJ, and Field Roast breakfast sausages... Some non-vegan items were also eaten, but not by me, and we shall not speak of that.

Here are the goodies I brought along: 

~ A big bowl of delicious stone fruits from the farmers' market. I am just such a nut for stone fruits. Cherries, peaches, nectarines, pluots, I love them all. 

~ A giant quantity of the Garlic Tofus from The Oh She Glows Cookbook. I love this recipe so much. I think it has become my favorite way of preparing tofu. I've reduced the oil a bit, and added a heaping spoon of nutritional yeast... and the whole thing comes together in about 10 minutes. Those little tofus are so damned tasty!

~ Lastly, I also brought a huge batch of the High Brow Hash from The Great Vegan Protein Book (book review coming soon!). I absolutely love this recipe! Since I was already bringing the tofus, and I knew my mom would be making veggie sausages, I actually left the seitan out of this hash, and added in extra veggies instead.

My aunt and her partner are also vegans, but they eat no-salt and no-oil, so they brought along black beans, salsa, avocado and corn tortillas for some special breakfast tacos that were yummy and not salty or oily.

giant bounty of Field Roast breakfast links!

Check this out! My mom made a giant plate of Field Roast breakfast sausages! Whooo HOoo! Happy birthday to me! I love these little sausages, and I especially love having an endlessly huge plate of them on the breakfast-for-dinner table.

foreground: banana pecan pancakes / below: plain puffy pancakes

The main course was pancakes! Of course, my mom is cool and already has a copy of Isa Does It! in her kitchen, so I suggested the Perfect Pillow Pancakes. Just look at how gorgeously these came out... They really were seriously pillowy and puffy!! We made half of them with sliced bananas and pecans mixed in (my favorite!!), and half of them plain (for people who don't know what they're missing).

It was a bit of kitchen chaos cooking up so many pancakes for so many people at the very last minute -- we had all four burners going, with four different pans, and the back door open from something that burned in the oven ... ha ha! Somehow it turned out that I had the most familiarity with pancakes, so I was the one sweatin' bullets and flipping flapjacks like a mad woman. In the end that just added to all the fun of it!

Here's my beautiful birthday brinner plate: Banana-Pecan pancakes, fresh fruit, OJ, veggie hash, tofu cubes, veggie links, and loads of love and appreciation!! Of course, I actually ended up eating more of just about everything, because I was quite overjoyed about this glorious meal. This really was such a perfect way to celebrate.

My actual birthday was kind of a weird, crappy day. Mr VE&T and I were having a weird misunderstanding, and so my heart was all heavy and confused and my energy was just weird. Happily, we more or less resolved it by the end of the day... but it was still pretty much a bust. So, on the day of family brinner, I declared it a Birthday Do-Over! I had a meet up with a friend, a fun walk with Mr VE&T and the dogs, and this wonderful family breakfast-for-dinner. It was a totally satisfying do-over day! Three cheers for the healing power of brinner.

If you don't follow me on FB or Instagram, you may have missed the news about my fun bday present that I got for myself: I went to a proper salon and got my hair dyed blue!! I've wanted blue hair for soooo long, but I had never dyed my hair at all before.  I absolutely love it! I'm also open to any and all "how to take care of colored hair" tips that you crazy, colorful vegans might have for me. 

ps. I still have a few more posts about VidaVeganCon that I will be sharing, but I didn't want the rest of life to pass me by. Keep an eye out for more VVC fun recaps coming down the line.