Green Options

Since I’ve been in college, my morning routine has remained pretty consistent: wake up, brush my teeth, make some coffee, get dressed, make my bed, collect my school things, fill up my thermos with brew, and go. The whole she-bang takes about an hour. The last step, in which I am walking out the door, is usually when I have an oh yeah moment, and remember that I should eat something. That’s when I grab some Pop-Tarts and run to class.

Even though I eat them for breakfast regularly, I think that Pop-Tarts are a lousy meal. The pastry is bone dry, the filling is overly sweet, and the frosting resembles old, flaking nail polish. I also find Pop-Tarts to be extremely unsatisfying—even when I eat more than one, I feel like I am lightly snacking at best. To make matters worse, I am unsatisfying myself with a lot of empty calories: two tarts (one package) offers 400 calories, 10 grams of fat, and little nutritional value.

Like a lot of the foods in my diet, I’ve been eating Pop-Tarts because they are cheap and convenient. But because breakfast is such a vital part of my day, I’ve decided to start improving the quality of the meal, even if that means investing a little more of my time and money.

Common dieting advice suggests eating breakfast because it can jump start your metabolism and helps prevent you from eating more later in the day. Researchers in London may have finally figured out why — skipping a morning meal can fool your brain into thinking the body actually wants high-calorie foods, which, if eaten too often, can inhibit weight loss.

So What Is This Study Exactly?

A team from Imperial College London presented these findings at the Endocrine Society’s 91st annual meeting held in Washington D.C. in July. Scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, which measure blood flow in the brain, to see how eating impacted the brain’s reward center.

The study involved 20 healthy people who took an fMRI scan on a morning when they skipped breakfast and on a morning when they ate breakfast. During each test they were shown photos of high-calorie foods like pizza and cake, and low-calorie foods like salad and fish. On the morning they had breakfast, the participant’s reward center lit up more in response to the high-calorie foods. On the morning when they had breakfast, the reward center didn’t show any difference between high- and low-calorie foods.

Breakfast time is usually a big deal at our house. I try to make sure the little guy gets a healthy nutritious meal to start the day.  I also try to stay away from cereals due to their high sugar content but occassionally a bowl of cereal makes it’s way onto the table.

Since having a child I’ve made breakfast important. I mostly make meals from scratch and make the best attempt to stay away from anything packaged. The chickens have been such a blessing. We’re able to cook eggs most days any which way you can think of and have them for breakfast or “breakie” (what we call it here).

Pancakes are the biggest hit for breakie…just ask my son, he’ll tell you he wants *pancakes*! Before I knew about this recipe I’m going to share; I’d always thought I was making pancakes from scratch.

Two things peak like clockwork every August on our Wisconsin farm: Both the tomato harvest and the flow of guests at our B&B, Inn Serendipity, hit their peak. A time of rich abundance sprinkled with managed chaos, everything dances wildly amidst summer seasonal flow.

Which means I’ll gladly embrace any way I can simplify life right now, particularly when it comes to serving that morning meal daily to our B&B guests. Here’s a serving of our favorite tips and ideas for hosting a summer breakfast of your own, showcasing the abundant local, fresh flavors of the season and featuring our house recipe favorite: Fresh Tomato Breakfast Pie.

1. Prep the Night Before

This Fresh Tomato Breakfast Pie recipe serves up a great example of my ideal B&B recipe: Looks and tastes much more complex than it is. My morning B&B routine is a whole lot simpler if I can prep and organize my dishes the night before and just cook them fresh before serving. This recipe works well for that: Make and bake the crusts the night before. Chop and prep the tomatoes and other ingredients, then just assemble the pie in the morning and bake.

Many people have never heard of teff, but this unique gluten-free grain dates back to the age of the pyramids.  Most often ground into flour to make injera, a fermented flat bread, teff has served as a primary food source in Ethiopia and Eritrea since approximately 3000 B.C.  Despite its enduring history as an African staple, teff’s presence in America is less than forty years old. In the 1970s, an entrepreneurial farmer observed a parallel between the weather of Idaho’s Snake Valley and Africa’s Great Rift Valley, and began successfully cultivating teff in the United States.

Individual grains of teff are extremely small, just 1/150th of the size of a kernel of wheat.  When cooked as a hot cereal, the tiny grains –  comparable to the size of a poppy seed — create a deliciously smooth texture.  In fact, the taste and consistency of teff porridge is more like cream of wheat than any other gluten-free whole grain I’ve prepared.

When you see teff’s impressive nutritional profile, you’ll see why it provides a compelling case for adding this gluten-free grain to your diet.

Of the adjectives used to describe gluten-free baked goods, the word “fluffy” rarely makes the cut.   Heavy,  solid, crumbly, dry — yes, any and all of those. Those of us living sans gluten have gotten used to the slice-and-toast routine when it comes to wheatless breads.  Fresh-out-of-the-oven-fluffy has all but vanished from our vocabulary. These fruit-sweetened beauties, though, change all of that.

For starters, the batter actually rose above and beyond the baking tin’s edge.  When’s the last time you remember anything gluten-free doing that? These muffins even manage to disguise shredded fruits and vegetables without coming anywhere near the dreaded dense description.

Goodbye flat, vaguely muffin-shaped globules.  It’s time to move on.

Vegetarian breakfasts are easy: Greek yogurt sprinkled with granola, scrambled eggs, pancakes, French toast… The list goes on forever.  While I wouldn’t say that vegan breakfasts, on the other hand, are challenging, its certainly a good opportunity to think outside the box.  Unless of course, you don’t mind cereal with soymilk every morning for the rest of eternity.  Me?  No thanks.  Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day, and don’t think I let being vegan get in the way of that.  Here are some of my favorite vegan breakfast ideas that are filling, nutritious, and keep me away from the cold cereal.

Editor’s note: The following post was originally published on Green and Clean Mom. “Green & Clean Mom can inspire you to try a little harder, be a catalyst for change and to offer you some new tips and news on how to be the green, sexy and sassy mom…I know you are!”

Back to school time means, healthy breakfasts are a must but there isn’t much time to make that happen. We’ve heard it over and over, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. This may be the case but I don’t believe every child or person is the “breakfast type”. Personally, I just want some coffee and maybe a piece of toast. I’m just not hungry or in the mood to eat in the morning. My husband loves breakfast food, my son nibbles and my daughter devourers her food and wants breakfast the minutes she wakes up.  Every person is different but that doesn’t change the fact that we all should eat something healthy to start our day.  With very little time in the morning how can parents have a healthy and nutritious meal and not rely on the frozen waffles and sugary cereal?

Here are my back to school, start the day off healthy tips:

1.  Make a breakfast casserole the night before and pop it in the oven.  I make quiches and call them breakfast pies, my son thinks he’s eating something special.   It is packed with protein and I’m controlling the ingredients (organic eggs, whole grain breads, organic milk, fresh broccoli, organic chicken or hormone free sausage).

If you’ve ever seen an episode of the canceled Nickelodeon show Invader Zim, you’ll undoubtedly know that Zim’s robotic pet, GIR, loves waffles.  He always seems to be cooking up a batch of them at the most inopportune moments.  As my fridge never seems to be without a ready-to-go bowl of waffle batter, I can definitely relate to GIR’s waffle obsession.

But unlike GIR, who has only a vague idea of what he’s put in the batter (What’s in ‘em?” Zim asks in one episode.  “There’s waffle in ‘em,” GIR responds), I can vouch for every single corn-free, gluten-free, dairy-free, wheat-free ingredient.  Plus, the recipe is so versatile, you can practically customize the waffle to your morning mood.

My girls love themselves some pancakes, but there is something that I just cannot handle about standing at the stove for half an hour flipping pancakes first thing in the morning. It’s like I can feel my life passing me by while I stand there, flipping and flipping and flipping.

Instead of flipping and flipping and flipping these days, now I bake my girls these pancake muffin cuties–they’re pancakes, baked in the oven instead of on the griddle, and they’re delicious, portable, and amenable to the same yummy variety of toppings that makes pancakes so awesome.

Here’s how I make them:

What do you like in your oatmeal? Today I like thin sliced almonds and dried cherries, blueberries, cranberries, golden raisins and a twirl of honey (shown below). This tastes delicious with my black-cherry tea.