Good Morning!

I'm not much of a breakfast eater. I used to skip it religiously, since I was never hungry. Now I make myself have something, usually either an apple or a banana, sliced, sprinkled with with apple pie spice and chia seeds, with a side of peanut butter. However, I'm never going to be someone who leaps out of bed and wants to chow down on biscuits and veggie sausage and a plate full of pancakes at 7 a.m. Bobby, however, is precisely that someone. So I made these guys on a random weekday morning.

Banana chai pancakes with toasted coconut + mystery sauce

The recipe came from one of my favorite cookbooks "How it All Vegan ". A lot of vegan cookbooks can be overly fussy and they seem to call for ridiculously expensive health store ingredients just to be jerks about it. This cookbook is refreshingly basic. Pretty much every recipe has less than 15 ingredients (including spices) and they don't constantly rely on tofu. These guys were made with no oil thanks to mashed bananas, and I subbed a half a cup of the almond milk for a half  a cup of chai tea. While one side was cooking, I sprinkled unsweetened coconut on the top, flipped it, and finished cooking it while toasting said coconut. Bobby ate his plain. I had mine a few hours later, and drizzled it with that mysterious brown sauce. What is it, you ask? Chocolate? Blueberry syrup? Nope. It's balsamic. Vanilla fig balsamic, to be exact.

I'm a bit obsessed with balsamic anything, and it was just the thing to cut the sweetness of the pancakes. We picked up these three little friends at the farmer's market last weekend. They are all delicious. The woman makes her own special flavor blends, and I'm grateful for every single one. That blackberry ginger is going to be so good on some vanilla coconut ice cream...