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Weekend Breakfasts

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omelette with pepper, onion and tomatoDuring the week it’s often hard to find the time and energy to prepare a proper breakfast. I often find myself misbehaving and grabbing a bacon roll. Yes, it’s not the “right” kind of start to the day, but it’s still better than no breakfast at all.

Come the weekend, however, and I can take the time to put together something more wholesome and healthy. Assuming, of course, that I have the ingredients to hand.

If I can I like to prepare a simple, yet tasty, omelette on a Saturday morning.

Omelettes, which I’ve mentioned several times in the past, are versatile. You can be as inventive as you like with them. It all depends on what you have to hand.

This morning, for example, I used:

  • 3 eggs
  • onion
  • green pepper
  • tomato

And served it with a hot sauce that I’d picked up on one of my trips to the US.

hot sauce

I’m not sure if it’s better or worse than ketchup, but I like the “kick” it adds to an omelette.

Washing the entire thing down with some freshly brewed coffee gives you a good start to the day 🙂

How Important Is Breakfast?

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While my diet and weight loss isn’t as much of a success as I’d like I have made a conscious effort over the last couple of years to improve certain aspects of my lifestyle.

Breakfast is important. You need it. If you skip it the rest of your day is going to be screwed up.

Why?

It’s all about your metabolism and how it handles things.

So for the last couple of years I’ve been having breakfast of some kind pretty much every single day. Sure, there are times when I simply cannot get breakfast for any number of reasons. For example if you have a flight at 5 or 6 in the morning the likelihood of being able to even find anywhere that can serve you simple breakfast is slim. But I will at least be able to pickup a coffee and maybe a pastry.

This graphic explains some of the factors as to why breakfast is so important as well as providing some figures on how Americans treat it. I doubt the figures for Ireland would be drastically different, though we don’t have a Starbucks on every corner!

the importance of breakfast

Via

Carrot Juice At Breakfast

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English: Glass of juice and carrots Français :...

English: Glass of juice and carrots Français : Verre de jus et carottes (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I bought a juicer machine about a year ago. A friend had been singing the praises of “juicing” and how it was beneficial for health and weight loss.

Of course, like so many things, I liked the concept more than the reality and the machine has been sitting in a corner in its original box for the last year.

A couple of days ago, however, I was having breakfast in a Dublin hotel. One of the options on offer was freshly made carrot juice. They had a juicer and piles of chopped carrots sitting beside it with basic instructions on how to make your own.

That got me thinking. I like carrots – I like grating some carrot into sauces to add flavour and carrot juice is delicious. Why couldn’t I make my own?

So this weekend instead of buying one bag of carrots from the local supermarket I bought three.

I unboxed the machine this morning, rinsed the bits that needed a cleaning before use and set about making my own fresh carrot juice.

It wasn’t hard – it was actually incredibly easy!

4 or 5 carrots yielded a good sized glass or so of fresh carrot juice and it was absolutely delicious!

So what are the benefits of fresh carrot juice?

According to Wikipedia:

Carrot juice has a particularly high content of β-carotene, a source of vitamin A, but it is also high in B complex vitamins like folate, and many minerals including calcium, copper, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, and iron. A pound (454 g) of carrots will yield about a cup of juice, which is a low yield compared to fruits like apples and oranges. However, carrot pulp is very tough; the main difficulty in juicing carrots is in separating the pulp from the juice.

So it’s absolutely packed with nutrients!

Whether I’ll have “plain” carrot juice or start experimenting with combinations remains to be seen, but I love fresh juices, so my juicer might start getting some use from now on .. at least that’s the plan!

Healthy Breakfast In Scottsdale

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I’ve mentioned more than once how travel really makes dieting awkward. Yesterday is best written off, as I spent the day on planes and eating whatever they gave me.

Today, however, I started the day off with a very tasty breakfast in the Royal Palms in Scottsdale:

Grapefruit juice, coffee and Baked oatmeal with berries served with vanilla almond granola from Laura’s Gourmet Granola (I’ve no idea who they are!)

The entire thing was absolutely delicious and not heavy calorie-wise.

I’ll probably misbehave later in the day, but at least I started off well 🙂

Poached Egg On Toast

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A single broken poached egg on 2 pieces of toa...

A single broken poached egg on 2 pieces of toast bread. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As an alternative to scrambled eggs this morning I had poached eggs on toast for breakfast.

I love the taste of the egg combined with the toast and it’s simplicity itself to prepare.

Removing the eggs from the saucepan is pretty easy as long as you have the right kind of spoon 🙂

Print

Poached Egg On Toast

A simple breakfast packed with goodness
Course Breakfast
Cuisine International
Keyword breakfast, eggs
Prep Time 1 minute
Cook Time 4 minutes
Total Time 5 minutes
Servings 1
Calories 310 kcal

Ingredients

  • 2 eggs
  • 2 slices of brown bread toasted
  • Low fat spread
  • Black pepper to taste optional

Instructions

  1. Bring some water to the boil in a small saucepan
  2. Break two eggs into a glass
  3. Pour the eggs into the boiling water
  4. At the same time prepare the toast
  5. Remove the eggs after a minute or two. They should be cooked enough on the outside to hold together

  6. Serve with toast and enjoy!

Eating Reasonably Well While Travelling

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Grilled Tuna SteakI cannot avoid travelling quite a bit for work. And I need to get past my worries and concerns about what I can and cannot eat while “on the road”.

For the past 3 weeks I’ve been “out and about”. During that time I’ve been relatively careful about what I eat, but not obsessive.

The worst days are those, like last Friday, when you don’t get a proper meal all day (apart from breakfast) and end up snacking when you can.

Good days are when you get 3 good meals during the day and manage to avoid junk.

So apart from the “travel days” I’ve managed to strike a certain rhythm with respect to what I eat.

Breakfast is key. I simply have to have some kind of breakfast or I’ll be really hungry by late morning. When you’re staying in hotels there’s usually plenty of options available. The Hilton chain gives me access to their executive lounges which don’t have exactly “amazing” breakfast choices, but they usually have coffee, juice, cereal and some kind of bread.

Lunch will depend on where I am and how much time I have available. While I would normally settle for a very light lunch of soup and bread when I’m in the office, when I’m travelling that usually isn’t an option and grabbing something relatively good, but not gigantic seems to work.

Dinner of course will vary, but I did quite well over the last few weeks.

I learnt quite a bit from my trip to the US earlier in the year and since I was travelling in Costa Rica and Germany this time round the quality of food available was quite a bit higher. Good salads, simple grilled meat (without sauce) etc., made for a relatively good combination.

Unfortunately the one area that I still haven’t really found a solution to is actually tracking my intake while “on the road”. The only thing I can do, realistically, is to keep an eye on quantities, so only having one serving from a buffet instead of “going nuts” seems to work (to a point).

Alcohol, of course, probably doesn’t help. A week in Germany, for example, is basically a week of drinking lots of nice beer!

 

 

Scrambled Eggs Without Butter

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On weekdays I stick to simple and easy breakfasts ie. the most complicated equipment needed being a kettle and the toaster.

At the weekend, however, I’m not in a hurry and I don’t have to get up until I feel like it. So making scrambled egg for breakfast is a good option. I’ve always associated scrambled eggs with butter. When you’re on a diet, however, butter isn’t exactly something that you’re going to be shoving on anything – never mind using enough of it to cook!

Fry Light Sunflower Oil Spray

Fry Light Sunflower Oil Spray

The solution, apparently, is to use a low calorie spray instead. One of the more popular options in Ireland seems to be Fry Light Sunflower Oil Spray which is pretty versatile. I was curious about how the product stacked up in terms of calories, cholesterol etc., so here’s the breakdown:

  • Less than 1 calorie per spray
  • no cholesterol
  • gluten free
  • no artificial preservatives
  • suitable for shallow frying, roasting and baking

And based on my limited experience of using it the taste is fine ie. you don’t actually notice.

So here’s the recipe for making scrambled eggs for one person using a light sunflower oil spray instead of butter:

Fry Light Sunflower Oil Spray
Print

Scrambled Eggs Without Butter

This is a tasty and quite filling breakfast when you have the time to make it
Course Breakfast
Cuisine French
Keyword eggs, omelette
Prep Time 1 minute
Cook Time 5 minutes
Total Time 6 minutes
Servings 1

Ingredients

  • 1 egg
  • 2 tablespoons of low fat milk
  • mixed herbs to taste
  • black pepper
  • 2 slices of brown bread or toast made from brown bread
  • low fat spread
  • Fry Light Sunflower Oil Spray or equivalent

Instructions

  1. Beat the egg in a bowl with the milk
  2. Add any herbs you want to add extra flavour
  3. Heat a frying pan and cover it with a couple of squirts of the oil spray
  4. Pour the egg mixture into the pan
  5. When the egg mixture begins to set stir it energetically with a wooden spoon or spatula
  6. Keep stirring until the egg is cooked enough for your taste
  7. Serve the egg on the bread

You’ll notice that it’s only using one egg and a small quantity of milk, but you really don’t need anything more.