Savory Pumpkin Grits Breakfast Bowl

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Savory Pumpkin Grits Breakfast Bowl

This Savory Pumpkin Grits Breakfast Bowl is packed with veggie sausage and topped with a fried egg. If you wanna be really fancy - try it in a pumpkin bowl!

Course Breakfast, Mornin' Eats

Cuisine American

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 25 minutes

Total Time 35 minutes

Servings 4

Author Brewing Happiness

Ingredients

• 2 cups unsweetened non dairy milk, divided
• 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
• 1/2 cup white grits
• 1 tablespoon vegan buttery spread
• 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
• 1/2 teaspoon salt, divided
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper
• 2 vegetarian sausages, sliced into thin rounds
• 1 cup sweet onion, diced
• 1-2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 3 eggs

Serve with:

• Whole wheat toast optional
• Pumpkin bowl optional*

Instructions

If you want to make a pumpkin bowl...

1. Preheat oven to 400.
2. Cut off the tops of 3 mini pumpkins.
3. Scoop out all of the seeds, and place the "bowl" part of the pumpkins onto a baking tray, opening side up.
4. Bake for 40-45 minutes.

Savory Pumpkin Grits:

1. In a large pot bring 1 1/2 cups non dairy milk, 1 tablespoon vegan buttery spread, and 1/4 teaspoon salt to a boil over high heat.
2. Once boiling, add in 1/2 cup grits, stir, and wait for it to return to a boil.
3. Reduce heat to low and cover for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. Meanwhile, heat a pan over medium heat with 1 tablespoon olive oil and diced sweet onion. Sauté for 5 minutes.
5. Add in your vegetarian sausage and garlic. Sauté for another 5 minutes.
6. Take off heat and set aside.
7. After your grits have cooked for 15 minutes, add in the remaining 1/2 cup of non dairy milk, 1/2 cup pumpkin puree, 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and pepper to the pot. Cover for another 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
8. While the grits are cooking, heat a pan over medium-high heat with a little olive oil. Once hot crack each of your eggs into the pan. Season with salt and pepper, and cook to your optimal doneness. (Probably 2-3 minutes.)
9. Add your onions and veggie sausage to your grits, and stir.
10. If using a pumpkin bowl, pour the grits into each bowl, top with your egg, and serve with toast (optional.)
11. EAT UP!

Let’s talk about dancing. I grew up doing competition dance, and honestly I was like the best of the worst there. I’m not naturally incredibly flexible and my body is just never going to be a dancer’s body. In fact, I ended up pulling both of my groin muscles and actually popping my hamstring during this time. My body was in full rejection mode of this dream of mine. I was never going to be a great dancer.

So I quit. I spent a lot of time kicking myself for not being good enough at it. I also decided that I wasn’t going to dance at all, not even the fun kind that you do with friends. I became so self aware and critical of the way my body moved. At school dances or, later, out at bars I was ranking every movement of my body. And when I dated a boy who loved to create the goofiest dance moves he could muster and bust them out at parties, I stood behind him smiling and laughing and wishing that I could dance with that much freedom. 

I had forgotten the main secret of dance : it’s for you, not the rest of the world. But one day in my kitchen, while making food, I put on a song that I loved and my body started to move – started to remember. And I just let it. Move through time, through space, through feels. I whirled and tapped and flailed and turned my way through the kitchen, stirring pots occasionally. My body was remembering what moving without judgement felt like. oh so good.

I continued this practice in my kitchen almost every day – dancing away all of my fears and preconceived notions about my body. Soon I took this feeling out of the kitchen and let it live in my everyday life. I took it to bars and friend’s houses and parties and eventually back into dance classes. That’s right, I ended up where I began – dance class. I loved every moment of the movement. But again, my body did not. 

One day during a hip hop class, I felt a twinge in my back then some shooting pain up my spine. I shook it off (this had happened before) and kept going. But that day after class, I sat down and when I tried to get back up again pain nailed me to the seat. I was unable to walk, to drive, to move.  I called my parents who drove me to the doctor, only to find out I have bulging discs in my L4 and L5. Dance class was over, once again.

But this time I knew something about dance that I didn’t know the first time I was injured – you don’t have to move well to dance. Dance is my soul food, dance is my way back home, dancing – however badly – is the way my soul moves through my body. I may not ever take another dance class, but that doesn’t matter.

Because now my favorite studio is in my kitchen, music blasting, eating spoonfuls of pumpkin grits while filling my soul up by just moving. Slowly, quickly, poorly, it doesn’t matter to me anymore. Because there is soul food – like savory pumpkin grits breakfast bowls – and then there is soul food, like dance. And I highly suggest that you find one of each of those and fill your life with as much of it as possible. *Go get your soul fed.*