I love breakfast. No, make that I LOVE BREAKFAST. It is without question my favourite meal. As you can tell from this blog I love other meals too. A lot. But breakfast is sine qua non to my daily happiness. Although it is rarely elaborate, and often involving no equipment other than a knife and hot overhead grill – or bowl and spoon – any sustenance is gratefully received. If ever I have to skip breakfast (I can’t remember when that last happened) I get seriously grumpy. Dropped pacifier, burst football, home team lost kind of grumpy. Stay the heck away if that happens is all I can say. Continue reading
Tag Archives: breakfast
Easy Shakshuka (Spiced North African Tomato and Eggs)
I was almost going to call this A Nearly Store Cupboard Shakshuka, but I realised that might be a tad presumptuous. I have had plenty of times in my life when the cupboards contained barely a tin of soup, let alone the fixings for a whole meal, so I can’t assume that the likes of marinated artichoke hearts are going to be sitting idle in your pantry. Tinned tomatoes, I hope, but perhaps not the ‘chokes or the roasted peppers. The point is that these aren’t fresh, and you don’t have to do anything but chop them and thrown them in the sauce. And they are optional anyway. So it’s just plain old Easy Shakshuka. I digress… Continue reading
Date-sweetened Carrot and Almond Porridge
I had hoped to come up with something profound to say on the subject du jour: New Year, New You. I might have gone on about fresh starts, turning over new leaves (leafs?), spring cleaning your diet/life/soul/refrigerator (maybe I should do the latter, if only as a good incentive to actually do it). But, to be honest, I am assuming that most of you are sorted for that stuff. And to be doubly honest, I hold no expertise in any of that. Continue reading
So Cocoa Granola (no added fat)
Don’t you just love it when you come across something that does double, or even triple, duty? I’m not talking about moisturiser, or Swiss army knives (which if the latter is really swish will do about a 36 jobs, including scale fish and remove the hook – cool Crimbo pressie?). As always, I am talking food. This food specifically, cocoa granola. Continue reading
Good-For-You Granola
Hands up, who likes granola? Excellent, that’s most of you. But did you know that some of the granola we eat should really be re-classified as dessert? Despite its rather saintly image, most granolas are quite high in both sugar and fat. And we tend to eat rather more than the suggested serving size. Unless I weigh it out, I know I can certainly tip in quite the little mound. And no, not even the fact that it may float innocently in unsweetened soya milk and be topped with decidedly healthy fresh berries makes it a super-healthy breakfast choice. If granola were a person I believe it would be batting its lashes coquettishly before leading us very astray.
So, does this mean you should relegate your favourite granola to the status of treat? Or, perhaps, just try an easy, no-brainer recipe instead? To help you make up your mind I have had a wee look at some popular UK brands, as well as a read of an interesting article that appeared in the Daily Mail newspaper. Despite knowing that commercial granolas are certainly not for dieters, I was quite taken aback by how ‘dessert-like’ are many of the brands – good, trusted brands. That’s not to say we should not have them. They aren’t evil or bad for us, just not what we think they are. Continue reading
Two Soda Breads
This morning I treated my daughter to the smell of freshly baking bread. Don’t I sound like a brilliant mother? Can’t you just picture a Mad Men vision of pinafore and pearls, oven mitts at the ready? Well, don’t be too impressed because it was actually due to neglect on my part. When Mr A left for work I noticed the bread bin was open – empty, save for a forlorn wrap bread of unknown vintage. On the countertop there was no sign of a plate, lidless jam jar, or butter-smeared knife – universal man-signs indicating the finishing off of bread. Super-sleuth me realised that Mr A probably went out the door with just a bit of fruit for his breakfast as there was also no soya or dairy milk (ruling out cereal). As Mr A often doesn’t have time for more than a five-minute lunch (I am not exaggerating) I was feeling very guilty. In mitigation I’m neither a bread or cereal person in the morning so can be completely unaware when things reach crisis point, such as today. Short of zooming out to a shop, pre-shower/pre-face, the only thing for it was to make some bread, a quick, delicious soda bread. Although this was not going to assuage the guilt at my 6’1” husband facing the day with a ‘fun-size’ banana, at least Miss R wasn’t going to go hungry. Or me for that matter.
