The Muffins Are On Me.

I got my copy of Vegan Brunch through the post this morning and got completely over excited. Our Saturday post arrives around 11am, so by the time I had looked through the book and decided what I wanted to make, it was already lunchtime. I went out on my bike for ingredients to make English Muffins and Scrambled Tofu (and also picked up some reduced plantain which I think I will cook up for brunch tomorrow), and at about 4pm sat down to this feast:

And (whilst it may not be the most photogenic meal ever and could have done with some green vegetables in it) it was great, and the potato salad on the right was made with the last of my smile potatoes! I've never made (savoury) muffins from scratch, so that was pretty exciting. I am already planning a smoked paprika version, and a marmite version. Mmmm. And scrambled tofu. I know it's this big vegan cliche staple that everyone is bored with, but I'd never tried it, and I think I could eat a lot of it before I got bored.

Vegan Brunch is a very exciting cookery book. I already own a couple of books by Isa Chandra Moskowitz (Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar) and they are all beautiful and entertaining and inspiring.

The only thing that trips me up is the American English (as these are American cookbooks), which is particularly difficult when it comes to measurements/volumes and the fact that some ingredients have different names. Like what the American's call cornmeal, we call maize flour - or more commonly - polenta. So I often have to approach recipes with my computer on in the background so I can google anything I don't understand.

Whilst trying to work out what cornmeal was, I came across this site, which promises to answer "life's vexing cooking questions". It's set up in a Q & A style, and you can search the archive or submit new questions. The tone of the answers can be a bit sarcastic at times, but it's a really useful site especially if you are trying to bridge the American/British cooking terms divide.

I also discovered that US and UK teaspoons and tablespoons are not exactly the same size as their transatlantic counterparts, which led me to this site which not only gives conversions from US teaspoons to UK teaspoons, but all sorts of other useful conversions, like a cup of flour converted into metric weight. Although to be honest I just have a set of American-size measuring cups which I use for any American cookbooks.