Look what I had for breakfast!

Labeled for easy identification.

Homemade bagels, straight outta Vegan Brunch. I made 6 plain bagels and 6 of the sundried tomato variety – I rehydrated a couple of sundried tomatoes, chopped ’em up, and added them to the dough before I letting it rise. I haven’t sampled a tomato one yet, but I’m optimistic.

These were super easy to make, although I found the dough a little dry, and it didn’t rise very much or seem very pliable – maybe I accidentally didn’t add enough water to my water + yeast mixture? I definitely didn’t add too much flour. As a result, the bagels are a little on the diminutive side – the one pictured here is probably the biggest of the bunch. But they still taste good, even if they are small and a bit lumpy. I put some organic blueberry preserves on half of this guy, and it was quite scrumptious.

If this looks like a light breakfast, you’re right – I wanted to leave a little room in my belly, because I’m going out for lunch with some vegans from work! I joined a vegan interest-type group earlier this week, and by some marvel of serendipity, they’d been planning a lunch meet-up at The Green Owl today. The Green Owl is Madison’s only fully vegetarian restaurant, and pretty much all of their menu is veganizable (if it’s not vegan already). And it’s all delicious. And they have an adorable owl motif throughout the restaurant! It’s almost too much awesomeness in one place.

Confession: There was mold in my blueberry preserves when I opened the jar this morning – guess I hadn’t eaten any in quite a while! But I performed some surgery and excised that shizz, and then proceeded to use the non-moldy preserves on my bagel. Is that gross? Unsafe? I got rid of all the mold and any jam that touched it, and I hate wasting food. What do you do when you encounter mold? Call it a day and throw your food away? Or do you clear off the offending bits and move on with your life?

P.S. Bonus points for anyone who can identify the quote in this post’s title! …and by “bonus points,” I mean I will think you are equally as silly as I am. :P