Sunday, February 19, 2012

Favorite Breakfasts

When I was young(er), I could never eat breakfast. Honestly, I just couldn’t get any food down until at least 10:00 a.m. But for the past fifteen years or so, I have to eat breakfast!

One of my favorite breakfasts for a long time was oatmeal with Greek yogurt and walnuts. I ate this pretty much every day for two years! Yes, that’s a lot of oatmeal. At the time, I really loved it, but a few weeks ago, I grew somewhat tired of it. I still have it maybe once a week, but certainly not every day anymore.

Oatmeal
With less oatmeal in my life, I had to find some new breakfast foods, and here are my current favorites:

Egg Scrambles
My favorite egg scramble combo at the moment is with mushrooms and spinach. I usually use one egg and one egg white per person and tons of veggies. I love adding some blueberries on the side. The scramble isn’t really the prettiest color, but it tastes great, and I love that I start my day with a lot of veggies and some fruit! Costco sells big containers of organic spinach and organic blueberries, and I always buy them…

Egg scramble
Kefir Smoothies

Tami recently posted about kefir. I used to drink a lot of kefir but had totally “forgotten” about it. It literally had been years since I bought and drank kefir. I love it plain, but Tami uses it in smoothies, and so I decided to use it in a smoothie, too. I love using fresh blueberries, a couple handfuls of spinach, and kefir. If I feel like making it more “dessert-like,” I also add a few drops of vanilla stevia. My friend Lara recently posted a link to Ellie Krieger’s thoughts on stevia on Facebook, and I think Ellie’s viewpoint makes a lot of sense. One of the things Ellie points out in the article is that stevia products are highly processed. In her Facebook update, Lara pointed out that stevia isn’t all that well researched and that some studies have shown some potentially quite negative side effects, which I think is an important reminder! I actually love the taste of my vanilla stevia drops, but I don’t use them very often. I try not to use any sweetener too much. I think sweetness is really a matter of what one is used to, and if you eat little sugar or other sweeteners, you will want less and less, and you’ll be able to taste the natural sweetness in foods again. Clearly, neither sugar nor other sweeteners are all that healthy, especially in larger quantities. But a little is nice once in a while… Smile

Kefir smoothie
Getting A Bit Stranger: Lettuce, Leftover Roasted Veggies & Over-Easy Eggs

I really think you can eat any food any time of the day, and I don’t think of certain foods as breakfast foods. Lately, I have been eating more greens, leftover veggies (I roasted a lot of veggies at least twice a week), and eggs for breakfast.

Poached eggs on salad
I don’t really eat sweet breakfasts very often, but I am thinking about making some banana pancakes with strawberry sauce some time soon as they have been on my mind A LOT lately… And, yes, that’s really more of a dessert than breakfast!Winking smile



Questions: What’s your favorite breakfast at the moment? Do you prefer savory or sweet breakfasts? What are your thoughts on sugar and sweeteners? 

Be well,
Andrea