End of Summer Breakfast

I'm not generally too fond of the end of summer. Living in Texas during the summer is a special kind of hell but one consolation is all the summer fruit. Peaches, plums, plumcots, berries, and figs galore!

Summer Breakfast

My workplace has one of those company programs that encourages healthy habits. My self assessment concluded that I could use move diversity in my fruit and vegetable intake. While it was kind of annoying that I thought I already had a healthy diet until I observed that just adding sweet potatoes to my breakfast doesn't really make up for the lack of variety. During the summer, it's easy to challenge that diversity issue with the plethora of fruits and vegetables available, but moving into the realm of limited fall fruits (though there are MANY apple varieties) and dried fruits.

Looks forward to persimmons coming in a few weeks.

Anatomy of a Good Breakfast: Grain

*I should emphasize that this is my opinion and I'm not a nutritionist, this is just my experience eating breakfast.

My work schedule is such that I usually only eat two meals that day and breakfast needs to sustain me for 6-7 hours before I eat my dinner which has a 30 minute time constraint. Essentially, during my work week I only eat one really good meal a day and that meal has to be breakfast.

My good breakfast revolves around grain.

• Cereal
• Toast
• Oatmeal
• Granola
• Pancakes
• Cuernos/Croissants
• etc etc...

I hope you get the general idea. I try to incorporate a fair amount of protein, fat, and fiber, but grain is always at the forefront of my mind in the morning

The amount of grain in my breakfast if reflective of how I think my day is going to fare. If I suspect that my day is going to be a little more stressful than normal, I'll add more grain (i.e. toast + a bowl of oatmeal, cereal with a croissant). If your breakfast needs to sustain you for a long period of time, focusing on the grain (particularly whole grains) aspect will ward off hunger longer.

Rough Work Day Breakfast

I recognize in my breakfast above (08/02/2017), there's a fair portion of protein and fat as well. I drink whole milk, eat whole fat yogurt, and LOVE egg yolks. I follow the logic that fat keeps you fuller longer. Also, only one of the bananas shown was eaten. In my larger breakfasts, it's harder to see grain at the forefront, but generally, if if I don't have much time to eat, I'll eat the cereal and toast, then go.

Now, some people have the luxury of being able to eat lunch and they don't need their breakfast to last them 6-7 hours until their next meal. In these cases, eating so that you'll be more hungry during lunch time is a better idea and it's an opportunity to enjoy more refined grains like in cuernos, croissants, crullers, and pancakes.

Low Key Breakfast

Why Breakfast is Awesome

Not that it needs an explanation, but in addition to being the most important meal of the day, breakfast - American style breakfast - has a lot of qualities to it that make it the most versatile meal of the day.

• Breakfast can be made fancy and elaborate without getting expensive
• Breakfast can be easily calorically modified
• Since breakfast is at the beginning of the day, it's almost fair game to eat anything since you have the rest of the day to digest. 
• Options get expanded massively when grouped into Brunch (though, this is a breakfast blog, so I'm avoiding brunch)
• It's the cheapest meal of the day, at home, or at restaurants. 
• If you're trying to better budget your money, focusing around breakfast over other meals can really aid savings growth over other meals
• The patterns of American style breakfast are good at incorporating breakfast elements of other cultures.
• It's one of the easiest meals to incorporate extra fruits & vegetables (emphasis on the fruits) into to get that daily five servings. 
• American style breakfast is a very distinctive meal from lunch and dinner. 
• Diet-wise, it's okay to eat sweets at the beginning of the day to cut the cravings for the rest of the day. 

Breakfast has it's charms. It can be the first dose of caffeine, distinctive sausage, or morning buns. Or maybe it's the thought that I can scrimp and still have a little bit of fanciness in my day. 

Surprise Breakfast Scene from Warner Bros "A Little Princess"