In recent times, I have been on the lookout for new breakfasts. I am terribly difficult to drag out of bed in the morning, (sorry honey), which means I'm always hurriedly running off wherever I'm meant to go. I'm almost always starving when I wake up, am also on a budget, and am trying to eat vaguely semi-healthily. So, I've been trying not to let my regular breakfast become a quickly inhaled muffin and latte.
Nigella Express has been a surprisingly profitable source of suitable breakfasts.
Breakfast Bruschetta
Avocadoes are currently cheap cheap cheap!! Wonderful! You don't really need a recipe for bruschetta, (grilled bread + olive oil + salt + pepper + chopped tomato or avocado mashed with lime juice) but it was good to be informed that it makes a fantastic breakfast. And healthy too, with the lycopene-filled tomatoes, low GI sourdough toast and the polyunsaturated fat from the avocadoes.
I've never been a fan of Nigella's 'catchy' recipe titles, which seemed to coincide with her At my Table column and her short-lived (but not that bad, really) Nigella! program. I mean, why a "No Worries" chocolate mousse? However, I have always definitely been a fan of the recipes themselves! So back to the point. Nigella's take on a breakfast smoothie contains a frozen banana, ovaltine (Milo for me, thanks), milk, honey and coffee powder, with peanut butter as a suggested substitute for the coffee.
This combination is, unsurprisingly, delicious. I think I've made it at least a dozen times since I got the book - yum yum. However, it's not a very filling breakfast, and I assume it has a rather high GI rating. I tend to make this to tide me over when I know that a real breakfast or a big lunch is a few hours away. You know, yum cha, the gym, a morning class. Incidentally, I don't know why everyone says that smoothies are a quick breakfast; I always find them quite fiddly to make, and, unlike toast or a muffin, not easily portable. Washing the blender afterwards is also a bit of a pain, especially if you don't have time to do it straight away, and you thus need some serious scrubbing to get it clean.
Breakfast Bars
This is simplicity itself to make. Mix together oats, dried cranberries, peanuts, shredded coconut, some mixed seeds and a tin of condensed milk; then spread into a tin and bake at a superlow heat for 1 hour.
Mmm mm! Smells dee-licious! And it tasted just as good. The recipe made 16 bars, which lasted for about a week and a half in my house.
My dad loooved these, as did I. I haven't decided whether or not these bars are healthy;but given that it's a Nigella recipe, I'm not too optimistic. However, considering that it contains no oil or butter, and that the condensed milk I used was 98.5% fat free, I'd say it's not too bad. I was also impressed by how low-GI they were. I found that one bar, eaten at breakfast time, kept me super-full right up until lunchtime and stopped me hoeing into sugary snacks at morning tea time. Bonus!