Let the brunch odyssey begin!

Last weekend I finally got around to picking up a copy of Isa Chandra Moskowitz's latest offering to the cookbook world, Vegan Brunch. As is the case with her previous works, it did not disappoint. I think I'm going to have a lot more fancy breakfasts in my future. The cooking kicked off with this lovely scrambled tempeh:


The tempeh is sauteed with a few vegetables and a nice big dose of kale. I love tempeh, but somehow I don't seem to eat it that often. My primary protein source most days is just straight beans, and then if I start getting into soy products tofu is kind of my default. I suppose it's that it's more widely available (not that tempeh is all that hard to find--I got this stuff at Trader Joe's). So I was pretty excited to have an excuse to work more tempeh into my repertoire, in the interests of culinary variety.


This dish pretty much typifies why I like Moskowitz's cookbooks so much. They're just full of good food that is fun to make and eat. My experience with vegan cookbooks is that they often fall into two categories: way too simple and repetitive (twenty recipes for lentil loaf!), or incredibly complex recipes that require days of advance planning, special trips to ten different grocery stores, and then five or six hours of preparation to top it all off (vegan haute cuisine). These recipes strike a nice balance in between--the food is fresh and different, but the ingredient lists tend to be fairly straightforward and the preparation is not rocket science either. If you don't have a Moskowitz book on your cooking shelf, you should!