The Breakfast Dilemma

I love breakfast, let me start out by saying that. My typical breakfast options involve opening some packaged cereal, or perhaps some really good granola, and adding yogurt or milk. Extra effort means making a scrambled egg sandwich on wheat toast. But by avoiding dairy and wheat products for the moment, I needed to come up with some new options. And I needed to figure out options that didn't involve spending hours preparing.

I was starting to realize that preparing good food takes time. And it takes even more time if you're not used to it. My learning curve was pretty steep. Most of my usual limited repertoire was verboten. I would have to go out of my comfort zone, and not just for breakfast. So I started experimenting.

On our way home from a visit with friends over New Year's in southern Spain, I ate an egg and potato dish at the airport that was very good (for airport food, that is.) It was pie shaped with layers of potato slices surrounded by egg. I decided that even I could probably replicate something that looked very simple.

First try involved boiling the potatoes. How hard could this be? However easy it is, it turns out I am not very good at it. I overcooked the potatoes on the first go and undercooked them on the second. I then sliced up a few potatoes (not very easy to make those thin, even slices), whisked my eggs and put it all into the fry pan. It looked reasonably appetizing, although nothing like what we'd eaten in Spain. Worse, the damn potatoes were rock hard. Now starving, I had to pull out all the potatoes, microwave them, and return them to the eggs. Not what one would consider a real success.

Luckily, one of my friends came to the rescue and showed me a recipe for a Spanish tortilla. Now I had some direction! My enthusiasm persuaded my boyfriend, the General (he comes by his moniker honestly), to try one out. He found a recipe for the Italian version, called a frittata, that involved 18 eggs, numerous potatoes and onions, and our biggest fry pan. The correct way to cook one of these is to saute the sliced (raw) potatoes, onions, and peppers in olive oil in the fry pan. When mostly done, they are taken out of the pan, mixed with the beaten eggs and poured back in the still hot fry pan. When the edges are set, the pan goes in a very hot oven. The egg mixture fluffs up as it bakes. Neither of us had made anything like this before and were impressed when we pulled it out of the oven. It looked great. More importantly, it was absolutely delicious. We stuffed ourselves and still had lots of leftovers. The frittata kept well in the refrigerator and reheated easily in the microwave. The General had figured out how to do it. Now it was up to me to attempt on my own.

Concerned about the vast quantities of eggs that I might end up consuming on this program, I followed the General's advice and used a ratio of 50% eggs with yolks to 50% egg whites only. And it turns out that raw potatoes are much easier to slice thinly than cooked ones. Feeling quite gourmet, I remembered to add some of our fresh rosemary that we had brought in from the cold. Et voila! Here's a picture of my final result. I had discovered a really great breakfast food for following a big workout or lazy weekend brunch with friends, one that tastes great and is full of fresh ingredients. No feelings of deprivation here!

My next conquest was oatmeal. I knew that steel cut oatmeal is better than instant or rolled oats. I also knew that it took about 30 minutes to cook. And what would I put on it to make it palatable? I'm normally one for lots of brown sugar. First experiment was on the topping front. I tried blue agave syrup as a sweetener which worked well. Then I added Udi's gluten free granola sweetened with honey which was delicious. This made a great combo. Now would the refrigerated oatmeal reheat acceptably in the microwave? I had a made a big batch to test out. Worked like a charm.

My experiments had been worthwhile. Compared to the first days of following this program, when it took me close to two hours from start to finish for breakfast, I had achieved two timely and healthy alternatives. Nothing like a little success to keep you going!