Breakfast. What a daunting word when you have multiple food allergies. It seems you can eat almost anything for lunch and dinner, but what's breakfast? Eggs, some sort of pork, a wheat filled bread type substance, and potatoes. Cereal, fruit and yogurt too, but those are not really 'Sunday Breakfast' material.
A few milk, egg, wheat, pork/beef free options:
- grits
- turkey bacon
- wheat free toast (we prefer white rye since we are not gluten free and other wheat free breads contain rice, another of Jack's allergens)
- country potatoes
- wheat free vegan pancakes (Bob's Redmill GF Pancake mix)
But this list is obviously lacking. We used to make wheat free biscuits and dairy free gravy but since losing rice products that hasn't been something we have been able to recreate in a decent way yet. Last night for whatever reason I wondered if there was a vegan way to make french toast. I jumped on the computer and looked it up and sure enough, there are all sorts of variations of this delicious breakfast food. Some included tofu so were off the list, but I found a few that used pureed banana and non-dairy milk, and a few that contained nutritional yeast flakes. I mixed and matched ingredients until I made one I thought would work for us. This mornign we gave it a shot and oh my, this was so good and easy. It does have a slightly banana-y aroma, but it is not distracting. Jack ate 2 WHOLE slices! He normally doesn't even eat one piece of regular toast. Score!!
Vegan and Wheat Free French Toast
3 ripe bananas
3/4 cup vanilla almond milk
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
a pinch of pumpkin pie spice (optional)
1/2 tsp Nutritional Yest Flakes or a large pinch of salt
2 Tbl Soy Free Earth Balance buttery spread, divided
In a blender or food processor, add bananas, almond milk, spices, vanilla, and yeast flakes. Blend until smooth. Pour the mixture into a pie pan or wide shallow bowl. Heat a large skillet on medium high heat. Add 1/2 Tbl Earth Balance butter to the pan. Once melted, add two slices of bread quickly dipped in the banana mixture and cook about 2-3 minutes on each side. Remove and place on a warmed plate and repeat with remaining butter and slices of bread. Serve with powdered sugar, syrup, and more Earth Balance.
Think this would be good even if you didn't have banana?
ReplyDeleteWell, I've never tried it with just the spices and milk so I can't say for sure, but I'd be willing to bet it would still be tasty, if not exactly french-toast-y. The bananas give the cooked bread that egg coated texture. You might be able to see in the picture that there's even pieces sticking out off the edge of the bread the way the egg does in traditional french toast. That probably won't happen if you don't use the banana, but like I said, it might very well still be good! If you try it please let me know!!
ReplyDeleteI will have to :D my kid is allergic to bananas, and almonds, so we'd be using rice milk as well. Your kid has allergies to rice milk, so it wouldn't be exactly like your recipe... but i love that we can work around them sometimes :)
ReplyDeleteVanilla rice milk should work fine :)
ReplyDeleteI have never used nutritional yeast, what does it do? Add a salty flavor?
ReplyDeleteChristine, it's flavor is a little hard to describe. It's often described as 'cheesy' and people use it on popcorn and as parmesan, but that sounds odd in this recipe and really it's not! But yes, it adds a slight saltiness that really just enhances the sweet flavors of the banana :)
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