1. Smoothies / Smoothie Bowls
Smoothies are super easy and chock full of nutrients. It helps to have a decent blender but even a cheap stick blender will do. A smoothie was my everyday breakfast for many years at one point.
Planning ahead: keep bags of frozen fruit in the freezer and either thaw overnight or in the microwave, or (if you have a good blender) use frozen, depends on how frosty you like your smoothies. Freeze ripe bananas ahead for using in smoothies. Just peel and place in a Tupperware container in the freezer. You can also use fresh banana in your smoothie, which is what I used to do when I only had a stick blender.
There is an endless variety of what you can put into a smoothie, but I recommend including frozen or fresh banana for creaminess, berries for flavour and nutrition, and a liquid to make it the right consistency. I like using a plant-based milk for this but you can also use water.
Extra nutrition boost – add some ground flax seeds and/or chia seeds, and a dash of cinnamon.
Smoothie bowls are a thicker smoothie which is eaten with a spoon, and has extra stuff sprinkled on top, like nuts, granola, chia seeds and chopped fruit. If you are eating out, Kupfert and Kim‘s smoothie bowls are delicious.
2. Yoghurt / Parfait / Chia Pudding
Plant-based yoghurts are now commonly available in most grocery stores. You can quickly layer them up with granola, nuts and chopped fruit to make a parfait.
Chia pudding can be made the night before. Chia seeds are an excellent source of omega-3 fatty acids, rich in antioxidants, and they provide fiber, iron, and calcium. Dry, they look like poppy seeds, but soaked in a liquid, they get gelatinous, making the mixture thicker and more pudding-like. It can also be blended to get a smoother consistency. This is a good opportunity to use cocoa powder to make chocolate pudding. Cocoa powder (as opposed to chocolate candy) is actually a health food. My favourite chia pudding is made by blending chia seeds, dates and cocoa powder with a plant-based milk.
3. Oatmeal / Overnight Oatmeal
We are all familiar with oatmeal. Use plant-based milk or water to make it animal-friendly. Don’t forget to add tasty nutrition boosters like ground flaxseeds, nuts, dried or fresh fruit, and cinnamon. Date, date sugar or molasses make the healthiest sweeteners, but any sweetener is fine as long as you are using it to help you get the goodness of whole oats. Some people like to cook the dates right in the oatmeal. Add cocoa powder for yummy hot chocolate oatmeal.
http://theminiaturemoose.com/dark-chocolate-cherry-oatmeal/
Don’t have time to cook oatmeal from scratch? There are good instant oatmeals, like Qi’a brand. I like the Superseeds & Grains variety.
If you just want to grab and eat – try overnight oatmeal. This takes 2 minutes the night before and zero prep time in the morning. Pour some rolled oats into a bowl (any kind, it doesn’t have to be instant), and add your extras like dried fruit, ground flaxseeds, chia seeds, cinnamon and nuts, and cover with plant-based milk. Put the bowl in the fridge overnight. In the morning it’s ready to eat. You can eat it cold from the fridge or warm it in the microwave. Add some fresh fruit in the morning (leave some of your frozen berries out to thaw overnight). This has recently become my go-to weekday breakfast. So easy, tasty and filling. At first, I was warming it in the microwave as the idea of eating cold oatmeal seemed a bit strange, but one morning I didn’t think of it until I was almost finished eating it and realized that it was great cold too.
4. Packaged Cereal / Granola
There are lots of animal-friendly versions. Pair with plant-based milk, and add extras like nuts, ground flaxseeds, cinnamon, dried and fresh fruit.
Some of my favourites are Ezekiel, Nature’s Path, and Love Grown. Love Grown Power O’s come in flavours like chocolate and strawberry, and you would never guess that their main ingredient is beans!
Almond and other kinds of nut milk are very popular, but I also recommend trying soy milk or the new pea-based Ripple milk. They taste deliciously creamy and have tons of protein. Ripple, in particular, has been designed to have a better nutritional profile than any other milk (plant or animal).
5. Things on Toast
Jams – I’m not a big jam eater, but there are various kinds including ones thickened with chia seeds.
Nut butter – don’t stop at peanut! There are all kinds of delicious kinds of nut butter just waiting to be tried.
You can put peanut butter and jam together, of course, but my favourite is to put fruit on top of nut butter toast. This is especially good during fresh berry season, but sliced banana works well too.
Do it in reverse – cut an apple into slices and spread with nut butter. I don’t usually have this for breakfast, but it’s one of my favorite snacks or desserts.
Avocado toast – just slice or mash with a fork.
Earth Balance is the most commonly available animal-friendly butter.
For the more adventurous – Marmite or Vegemite are savory spreads which are hugely popular in Britain and Australia. I grew up eating Marmite toast as a kid in the UK. It’s as popular there as peanut butter is here.
6. Muffins, Banana Bread, Cinnamon Rolls …
Animal-friendly versions can be bought or made at home.
7. Pancakes, Waffles, French Toast
Waffles are the easiest as they can be purchased and stuck in the toaster.
Huffington Post: This Is How To Make Perfectly Fluffy Vegan Pancakes
8. Cooked breakfast
There are lots of options here. Many traditional breakfast foods like potatoes/hash browns, mushrooms, tomatoes, baked beans are already vegan.
For animal-friendly eggs, the traditional route was to use tofu to make a scramble or omelet with nutritional yeast and soy sauce for flavouring. Omelets can also be made using chickpea flour. However, I now recommend the Vegan Egg. It’s a powder which you blend with water then just pour into a skillet for an omelet or scramble. Quick, tasty and high protein. It has an eggy sulfurous aroma too!
There are many varieties of plant-based breakfast meat to choose from. Field Roast makes acclaimed sausages.
For the more adventurous – tempeh bacon. Tempeh is made from cultured soybeans and is a traditional Indonesian food. It can be purchased already sliced and flavoured into bacon-like strips.
9. Beans!
Ful Medames – a big staple and common breakfast in Egypt – it is made from cooked fava beans served with vegetable oil, cumin, and optionally with chopped parsley, garlic, onion, lemon juice, chili pepper and other vegetables, herb and spice ingredients. If you want to try this eating out in Toronto, Karine’s has a great, filling version. This is my partner’s favourite breakfast.
English beans on toast – warm up a can of Heinz baked beans and plunk it on some toast. Done! Tip – stir some Marmite into the beans for extra flavour.
10. Tea and Coffee
I don’t have any personal recommendations for tea and coffee as I have always loathed coffee and am take-it-or-leave-it with tea. I am trying to include tea though as it has nutritional value (to get the most nutrition, don’t add milk or sugar).
You can get plant-based coffee creamers. Silk seems to be the most common.
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Buzzfeed: 29 Delicious Vegan Breakfasts
Animal Amigo 