Breakfasts - a selection

I love breakfast. It's my favourite meal of the day, along with lunch, dinner and snacks. It sets me off on a good start and fills me up until lunch time, especially when I get a good mix of carbs, fats and protein.

When I go to work, which is about 80% of the time, I make myself the same breakfast, day in, day out:

• a serving of mixed cereals - rolled oats, barley flakes, buckwheat flakes, rye flakes, sometimes even quinoa or millet flakes
• topped with some sort of yoghurt or dairy thing - Greek yoghurt, full fat goat yoghurt, home-made skim yoghurt, soy yoghurt, cottage cheese
• seasonal fruit - oftentimes half a grapefruit and then either berries or pears or kaki or kiwi
• a sprinkling of nuts or coconut flakes or milled seeds
• cinnamon

On the weekend though, and when I work from home, I get a bit more adventurous. I am working from home tomorrow and just had a look through my picture library - mmh, not sure what to have for breakfast tomorrow... Here are some of my concoctions: 

French Toast

Yoghurt bowl with fruit and oats

Porridge, yoghurt and fruit



Sauteed veg, egg and soda bread

 

Omelette with salsa and soda bread

Pancakes

Egg, soldiers and cuke

Courgette pancakes with Greek yogurt

The Cornwall Project at the Dissenting Academy

Last week, we were looking for a place to have a bite to eat in the neighbourhood. There is a pub close by called  the Dissenting Academy. They have recently started inviting pop ups into their kitchen. Currently, the most excellent Cornwall Project is in residence and boy, they rock.


Dissenting Academy

The British Boy and I rocked up and poured over the frequently changing menu, not sure what to have. You see, I might have mentioned this before, Max is not a big fan of sharing plates. At a push, he will share an appetizer, but he does not like the idea of having a plethora of plates and trying various things. Spoil sport.

We settled on sharing the scallops, which I am always drawn to on a menu. I love scallops! These were sweet and had some nice crust with the coral intact, and the sauce poured over - some creamy heart attack waiting to happen - was delicate and went very well with the leeks and potatoes. There was almost too much sauce.

Scallops, leek and potatoe

Luckily we had each ordered a flank steak with radish, cherries and kale. The steak was chewy in the right places, nicely charred, juicy and the cherries and radishes provided a lovely sour and fresh contrast. We moped up the leftover scallop sauce with the steak. Delish.

Flank steak, cherries, kale and cherries.



Yum.

I am definitely up for coming back and hope the Cornwall Project are staying in residence for a while.

 

 

Dissenting Academy

Last week

There are times when I just feel grumpy. Actually, that's not true. Grumpy sounds jovial, like one of the Seven Dwarfs. I mean dissatisfied, with almost everything in my life. And whilst I can do the gratitude list and looking at the positives, the dissatisfaction leaks back in like filthy sewage water through the cracks of a house's foundation. What I'm trying to say is that I've got poo-water in my cellar.

I can't pinpoint it, there is something I am not at ease with, that I can't seem to accept in my life, something I want to change and because I can't really find a starting point, I don't know where to start working on it.

These are the times when food can get tricky. A snack here, another handful of something there - neither of them needed and all of them definitely having an impact on my weight. Structure and balance is what seems to work for me. I forget it sometimes and when I do adhere to it, even these 'meh' times don't impact my food. That's a good thing, because poo water in the basement is definitely a 'meh' time.

To pre-empt food hell, I have had balanced meals:

Working from home and using up produce from the garden, I make colourful salads, to use up the last of the summer abundance.

Harvest Garden Salad with Pita

Weekend breakfasts are leisurely taken before going to meetings or doing yoga and last week I had wanted to try a muffin in pancake form. I grated an apple and a carrot, mixed it with one beaten egg and two teaspoons of coconut flour, a small handful of oat flakes and a splash of milk to loosen the mixture. It looked like barely coated grated apple and carrot and I was weary whether it would work. It turned out delicious and will stay in my breakfast repertoire.

Coconut flour, apple and carrot pancakes



Apple and carrot pancakes

Winner winner chicken dinner

Roast chicken with kale and sautéed mushrooms, sage & onions

Foods in sane times

After the scary Prague incident, I have had some really good weeks. Yes, it has been weeks since I've been back - three to be precise and I have had ups and downs and overall, I felt more connected with the here and now. There is still a niggling dissatisfaction at times, and there are moments of such intense happiness that I feel I want to burst and there are moments when I'm sad and annoyed and thankful and angry. Overall, it's all ok and I guess this is how normal people feel.

I look for and generally achieve a healthy balance when eating at home. That has been the case even before Prague, when I had this meal:

No-mayo-coleslaw with pomegranate and dill

My meal of coleslaw, egg and home-made hummus. That was followed by a piece of toast.

It's the travelling and being surrounded by temptation at work when I am most likely to slip at the moment. And when I have snacky stuff at home. So, I try to not buy snacky stuff.

Working from home one or two days a week means I am removed from office snack temptation and I can be more experimental with food and make warm meals. With autumn here, I am starting to warm to the idea of soups and stews, and I have a wonderful post to share about a vegetarian chili with guacamole. Anyway, a few weeks ago for lunch, I had this delicious vegetable frittata, which is quick to whip up, chock full of fibre, contains protein and the slice of toast with peanut butter and jam doubled up as carb and dessert. Winner.

After that frittata, which happened on the Friday when I had just returned from Prague, I had friends visiting from New York. They brought a lovely bunch of flowers to say thank you for letting them stay at our flat. Flowers in my house make me smile and brighten up my day. I think I will have to buy them more often for myself. The British Boy had gone to his parents and I was joining him on Saturday, so our friends had free reign over our little kingdom. Before I headed out to the countryside, I had a delish bowl of cottage cheese, a peach and oats. I forgot how much I actually like cottage cheese. It was the start of a good weekend and of saner times.

Cottage cheese, oats and peach with cinnamon