breakfast

Sunday Morning at Wollaston Beach

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Collage of six pictures, sandy beach with water, sea grass, a book with travel mug, a hand holding an egg sandwich, feet with grey sneakers over the sand.I’ve been thinking a lot about how I’d like to spend my summer mornings.

In my fantasy life, I would sit on the front porch, back deck or balcony sipping my coffee, eating my breakfast and reading a good book.

In my real life, I don’t have a front porch, back deck or balcony. But I have to be grateful for what I have and work with what I’ve got.

Wollaston Beach is just a five minute drive from me. So I started thinking. Why don’t I just make my breakfast and bring it to the beach? So I made a spinach, kale, fried egg, Parmesan cheese sandwich with rosemary and olive oil flatbread.

Then I made my coffee and used my What Would Olivia Pope Do? travel mug. It makes me wildly happy. The little things! I put on my favorite sneakers and headed out the door.

The salty beach air smelled wonderful. I mostly ignored a few ants. After all, I was in their territory. And I really enjoyed my breakfast and reading my book.

It was a nice start to my day and I enjoyed taking a few pictures while I was out there. Since I started blogging, I stopped keeping a regular diary. Instead I keep a notebook with goals, random thoughts and things that I want to remember.

Instagram is slowly becoming a daily diary of sorts. Not that I’m sharing my deepest feelings and thoughts. But I am documenting my life and being mindful of all that I have to be grateful for.

Recipe: Double Berry Almond Breakfast Cookies

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Double Berry Almond Breakfast Cookies cooling on a rack.

Back in 2008, I posed the question, “Cupcake or muffin?” Is the only real difference that one we eat for breakfast or a snack and the other is dessert? Muffins sometimes have glaze, which is basically frosting.

Calorically there is not much difference either. I agree with a recent Vox article stating that we need to get real about our American breakfasts. They are basically dessert.  Although an article found in Essence may help assuage our collective guilt.  Eating dessert for breakfast may help us lose weight. Let’s go with that one!

If you ever think that I will discourage dessert, then you are sadly happily mistaken. I have a healthy (cough, cough) breakfast cookie recipe for you. It’s been a while since I blogged a recipe, so the time is right.

The only reason that I found this recipe is because another one of my favorite magazines abruptly stopped publication — More Magazine. It was a great magazine. Stylish, intelligent and thoughtful. Oh well. Seems that doesn’t sell. I still miss Whole Living. *sigh*

But I digress. For the remainder of my More subscription, I was given Shape Magazine. It’s not bad, but not a true replacement. Anyway, I did find this breakfast cookie recipe. It’s sweet, but uses maple syrup instead of sugar. I added honey and made a number of other changes based on the ingredients that I had at home, my particular tastes and knowing my oven.

As I always say, a recipe is just a starting point. Adapt away! Let me know if you try the recipe and what you think.

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Double Berry Almond Breakfast Cookies (Adapted from recipe on Shape Magazine)
(Makes a dozen)

INGREDIENTS

  • 1/2 cup sliced almonds
  • 1/2 cup almond meal
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 1 cup whole-wheat flour
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 1/3 cup olive oil
  • 1/2 cup pure maple syrup
  • 2 T honey
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 tsp. vanilla extract
  • 1 cup rolled oats
  • 1  1/2 cup blueberries
  • 1 cup cranberries (halved)
  • 1/4 cup unsweetened dried cranberries
  • 1/2 tsp. orange peel

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.

In a medium to large bowl combine ingredients. Mix well. Use an ice cream scoop to put batter on baking sheet. Bake about 30 minutes. Remove cookies and let cool on a rack. Enjoy!

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Self-Care for Foodies: A Breakfast Board

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Breakfast Board as self-care

The breakfast board is not my creation. But I do love the idea after reading about it on A Cup of Jo and if feels like self-care. Maybe it’s the next big trend for the picnic season? It would be kind of fun eating this outside.

Somehow if feels rather fanciful eating from a board. Maybe because it’s different. So it seems special. Like I ordered it from room service at a posh hotel, even though I made it myself.

While this is a normal breakfast, I did take more care with placement as I spread everything out — a boiled egg, a pear, a bit of avocado, vanilla Greek yogurt with granola, dates and walnuts.

As more of us focus on self-care, so that we can accomplish what we want in any given day, and remain happy, not just sane, we each find different ways of nurturing ourselves.

I think the breakfast board is a nice way. It’s probably not something we’ll do everyday, but it’s a nice change.

Sometimes we just need a change in order to be a bit more productive and creative. Last night, I attended a dinner meeting at the UMass Club. Dinner was wonderful and our group accomplished a lot.

UMass Club view of Mass State House

When we walked into our room and looked out the windows, we were all struck by the view.

While I’ve been in many tall buildings in Boston and seen plenty of gorgeous views of the city, this was not the same area as usual, so the view was different.

Umass Club view of Prudential and John Hancock buildings

I’ve walked around Center Plaza and Government Center countless times. But never seen them  from 32 floors above! The same for the Massachusetts State House. A change in perspective can gives us a new way to look at life. And sometimes, that’s all we really need.

Lemony Sunset Pancakes

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lemon sunset pancakes
You know by now that a gorgeous sunset gets me every time. I’m really feeling the lemony yellow colors, so it makes sense that I tried a lemon ricotta hotcakes recipe this morning. It didn’t work out for probably a few reasons. They were edible, but meh. Lately my experiments with pancakes have not been the best.

What I was trying to recreate were the Lemon-Ricotta Pancakes that I had at Cheesecake Factory. A friend and I had Sunday Brunch there about a month ago. They were so good and I haven’t stopped thinking about them since.

You know that I’m all about being a home cook and don’t really eat out as often as most people would expect for a food blogger. But this is one instance where I’m perfectly happy to not make these pancakes again, but definitely will enjoy them when I go out to eat.