Breakfast‘s an epiphany, so discover marvelous morning meals
— Ancient proverb
Food gurus, school administrators, teachers, athletes and smart moms realize that breakfast, hands down, is the most important meal of the day for fueling the body and shifting the brain into high gear. September is National Breakfast Month, just in time for the back-to-school crowd.
Sew your Wild Oats
According to health food honcho Dr. Andrew Weil, it’s important to start the day with some carbohydrate to jump-start the brain. Every breakfast should include a slow burning or complex carb for a dose of well-paced nourishing fuel to fortify a body until lunch.
A slice of whole grain toast or bagel dressed with organic cream cheese or almond, sunflower or walnut butter — healthy proteins loaded with fiber, Vitamin E, calcium and omega-3 fatty acids — is a good start.
Hearty, steel-cut oatmeal topped with potassium-packed banana slices, or iron-rich raisins and a splash of almond milk, makes a scrumptious energy-boosting option, rich in soluble fiber to put the skids on cholesterol.
Serve seasonal fresh fruits, another form of complex carbs, instead of high-sugar fruit drinks that wallop the pancreas. Kiwi is a super fruit that dials-up more Vitamin C than oranges and more potassium than bananas. Blueberries, an immune boosting purple gem, has a motherlode of antioxidants and Vitamins A, B, C and E, while watermelon is bursting with electrolytes and potassium that are lost through sweating during morning activities.
Be a Culture Vulture
Certain dairy, like cottage cheese and yoghurt, are loaded with protein and calcium to boost strength and density for young and aging bones. Just a cup of organic yoghurt gives a whopping one-third of the daily-recommended calcium and 17 percent of the protein.
Multi-tasking yoghurt is also a natural probiotic to promote intestinal health and pump up the immune system.
Breakfast Bites
• Cereal is the top breakfast food in the USA: Cheerios — the people’s first choice.
• 1.5 billion cups of tea are sipped everyday around the world, while 1.6 billion cups of joe are chugged down. Coffee is the most popular beverage in the USA — 65 percent consume coffee during breakfast.
• French toast originated in the Middle Ages when cooks used leftover scraps of bread, milk and eggs to fortify their poor families during rough times.
Rise and Shine from Coast-to-Coast
Some good all-American choices include PB&J stuffed French toast, bacon and egg scramble with home fries, and deli-inspired New York fare of bagels, cream cheese and lox.
How Locals Dish It Up
The new Cusp restaurant in the legendary Hotel La Jolla serves sweeping views of the Pacific along with Chef Donald Lockhart’s breakfast faves — “Blueberry Ricotta Pancakes” with house-made ricotta and caramelized bananas; a savory “Open Faced Pastrami Egg Melt”; and the lighter option of “Uncle Frank’s Quinoa,” an egg-white scramble blending mushrooms, spinach, oven-dried tomatoes and the gluten-free Incan grain.
Dinner for breakfast? Check out Brian Malarkey’s “Breakfast Pizza” at La Jolla’s Herringbone. The pie is topped with breakfast regulars of bacon, eggs, Swiss cheese and hollandaise sauce.
Little Italy’s Davanti Enoteca does savory and sweet delights, such as “Calzone del Mezzadro” incorporating scrambled eggs, potato hash, sausage and provolone between folded pizza dough, while “Calzone di Frutta” has an apple and cherry compote stuffing with mascarpone cream topping.
True Food Kitchen goes light for “Quinoa Johnny Cakes,” with fresh blueberries and Greek yoghurt. And La Jolla’s Brockton Villa serves “The Puerto Huevos Steamer,” combining soy chorizo, steamed egg whites, black beans, brown rice, avocado and house made salsa.
For more breakfast recipes, e-mail kitchenshrink@san.rr.com or visit www.FreeRangeClub.com