Cheap, Fast, Good for You and Pretty? (aka the “Upside Down Fruit-on-the-Bottom Yogurt” Post)

If you ask, I’ll tell you that I don’t like breakfast. That given the opportunity, I will choose lunch over breakfast eight times out of 10.

But what I actually mean is: I mostly just don’t like breakfast’s attributes, like the bad (early) timing of the meal*, the general shovel-rush involved and breakfast’s propensity for empty, sugar-laden calories that are quick to spike — and quick to plummet.

I need protein, I need dairy, I need fiber that doesn’t come in a nasty, powdered mix or meal supplement like Muscle Milk. It’s early and I’m cranky and yes, the food has also gotta look good.

Thankfully, there exists the fool-proof combination of fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt plus granola:

When you turn the yogurt upside down into a bowl, the fruit-on-the-bottom becomes the fruit on the top, a pink, strawberry-flecked glaze. Add to that a couple of shakes of granola, dotted with nuts and dried fruit, and, instant success.

Beautiful, and, more importantly, good for you: A Liberté Méditerranée strawberry yogurt and a serving of Bear Naked‘s fruit and nut granola collectively pack 2g fiber, 9g protein and 20% calcium  into just 490 calories. Now that’s breakfast.

*The timing of brunch was invented for people like me.

Breakfast: Living Vicariously Through Granola (aka “The Expedition Granola Mix” Post)

Diving deeper into the many wonderous food offerings at Agata & Valentina: The latest discovery, Expedition Granola Mix ($5.99, 10 oz.).

Exploratory metaphors aside,  this is some serious granola. It begins with clusters of rolled oats, bound together by a sweet cinnamon-y coating — the exact kind of clusters that are coveted (and sparse) in boxed, supermarket cereals like Honey Bunches of Oats. Whole walnuts and almonds get the same treatment, which results in a candied crunch to the nuts, which is a real treat.

… which doesn’t mean that this granola shouldn’t be taken seriously as a breakfast option — or as a snack option, either. All the ingredients are natural, no additives, and essentially you’re getting whole oats, nuts (an excellent source of protein) and dried fruit (dried tart cherries, crasins and rasins, and coconut flakes).

Might have something to do with the name, but this granola immediately inspired visions of walking along trails in the woods, taking the road less traveled sort of thing, and I’ve been itching to get out of the city since. Sigh …

Breakfast: What a Difference $0.40 Makes (aka the “Used To Be Cheap Oatmeal” Post)

Unlimited topping oatmeal bar for $2.50? That’s a deal, especially when the toppings include fresh fruit of almost every color of the rainbow — chopped mango, pineapple, banana and strawberry bits, and blueberries — plus several kinds of nuts, plus the usual brown sugar, raisins, craisins, even.

Why buy fruit from the $7.50/lb. buffet at Village 38 (which is always a little questionable) when you can fit a serving’s worth of fruit into your oatmeal?

And that’s exactly what I did: If you could cut away a side view of the container, you’d see: The oatmeal fills the container a little more than halfway. Then, there’s a layer of sunflower seeds and brown sugar (I really want to make a geology/sediment/rock layer joke here, but I don’t know the terminology).

The remainder of the container is filled almost to the top with fruit, another sprinkle of brown sugar, the whole thing topped off with a good pour (probably about 1/4 c.) of whole milk.

Brilliant! This plan was working so well … until I got to the register. For my $5, I was given $2.10 change. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you gave me the wrong change, I said to the petite older woman who gives me change several days of the week. (I didn’t actually say, “not to put too fine a point on it.”)

She tried to tell me that oatmeal was $2.90. I pointed to the sign, “It says $2.50.” We went around and around a few times, waiting to see who’d get dizziest first and fall off (concede) when a guy behind the counter stepped in and told her to give me the $0.50.

Smart man. They were probably loosing money (or maybe just not intaking as fast) due to the holdup of the line.

Breakfast: Lucky Charms, Revisited (aka the Sugar Crash post)

I was so excited that I had Lucky Charms for breakfast … that is, until now, two hours later, when I just crashed and burned, my sugar index plummeting, all my happy little heart, star, clover, horseshoe and rainbow-shaped marshmallows but a memory once again.

I think, maybe next time I indulge in a bit of nostalgia for Lucky Charms, it should be as some sort of dessert component. But what to make that doesn’t involve me purely picking out the marshmallows and using them as ice cream topping (been there, done that)?

Breakfast: The “Is This the Rediscovery of Cereal?” Post

I go in and out of cereal kicks, but it’s been a couple of years.

(It’s also been a few years since I had to really wake up and eat “breakfast,” which may account for something. If I can go straight to lunch I generally will). When I get onto a cereal I stick, I pick one type — granola, oatmeal, rice-puffed cereal — and stick with it for a while until the novelty wears off.

cute milk

Cherrios and Honey Nut Cheerios are a classic brekafast cereal: It’s got that ying/yang between the crunch of the O’s and the slurp of the milk. Cute bee mascot, colorful packaging, and have you read all the health benefits cereal boxes boast of these days?

So my a.)  interest in and b.) delight with my bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios this morning naturally makes me wonder: Is this what’s next?

Breakfast: On Dots and Stones

Before blowing the last of my pence and pounds on the most expensive payphone phone call I’ve ever made at Heathrow Airport the other weekend, en route home, I picked up a few new foods from the airport Boots, nearly the last of which I ate for breakfast just now.

The U.K. has this ratings system on snack foods that color codes calories, fat, saturates, salt and sugars on a “green” (go for it), “yellow” (enjoy most of the time) or “red” (indulge now and again) scale, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why this nuts & seeds cereal bar received a red label. … that is, until I flipped it over. It’s completely coated in chocolate!

All of the sudden the voiceover from Gillian McKeith’s show on BBC America, “You Are What You Eat,” popped into my head, something about weighing five stone, which doesn’t mean much — I only know what a “stone” weighs in pounds in the vaguest sense and have absolutely no idea how many stones I weigh.

I think the important thing to take away from the voice that popped into my head is how the voice says the word “stone.” It’s all stretched out and low, like, stoooone. Check out the show, it’ll make you feel terrible about what you eat but great about how you look.