We spent our Sunday preparing a delectable feast of club sandwich style lettuce wraps and vanilla scented "fronch" toast with maple syrup and loads of fresh fruit. I guess this was our brunch which we ate around 10pm but we began working on the feast around 4pm.
First of all, I have heard that Challah bread makes the most spectacular French toast so I began my day by making a couple of loaves of vegan Challah from scratch using a recipe I found online.
The Challah took a long time to make so while we waited for it we made club sandwich inspired lettuce wraps. To make the wraps we sliced the following into very skinny strips:
- cucumber
- tomatoes
- cubanelle pepper
- shallots
- celery
We also grated some baby carrots and fried some Smart brand veggie bacon in a pan. To assemble our wraps we placed a leaf of red leaf lettuce on a plate and put some Vegannaise (vegan mayo) on the edges of the leaf. Then we filled the leaf with our cut up veggies, a veggie bacon strip and a slice of Tofurky brand vegan turkey slice. (We applied a little additional vegan mayo to the "turkey" slices and then rolled them up and stuck them on top of the bacon and veggies.)
Then we rolled the leaf up and the mayo on the edges helped to keep the lettuce wraps closed up.
In retrospect, iceberg lettuce might have been easier to work with since it has bigger leaves. A lot of our wraps did not come out as pretty as the ones in the picture but they all came out completely delicious -- crunchy, light, crisp, savory, refreshing, and a little salty.
By the time we finished assembling our wraps, it was time to turn our attention to our Challah bread which was ready to be turned into French toast. We used the recipe in the Vegan with a Vengeance cookbook but we used vanilla flavored soy creamer instead of the plain kind that the recipe called for. We served our French toast with maple syrup and fresh bananas, blueberries and raspberries.
The French toast was completely amazing. I mean, imagine making French toast out of a loaf of fresh bread that you made from scratch and just pulled out of the oven. The French toast had a faint vanilla aroma and a nice slighty crisp and slightly salty toasty exterior with a melt-in-you-mouth, soft, doughy, yeasty interior. The French toast coupled with the sweet and tart berries and bananas and the sweet maple syrup made for a mouthful that delights every tastebud.
The whole meal was so worth the trouble and satisfying beyond words. I am still sort of on cloud nine from it. If you have a Sunday to waste, this is definitely a good project for it.
