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4 Breakfast Options for Everyone

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Mornings are busy. That’s just how it is. But does that busyness mean that a healthful breakfast is impossible?

It doesn’t.

Yes, it might be impossible to sit down to a multi-course, elaborate breakfast each and every morning, but there are a surprising number of simple, balanced, and healthful breakfasts that can please the whole family. Let’s take a look at some top contenders.

BurritoBreakfast Option #1: Make Breakfast Burritos

Breakfast burritos are infinitely adaptable, easy to travel with, and great vehicles for healthful ingredients. Scramble some eggs or egg whites, add drained and rinsed canned beans and some salsa and you’ve got a great base for endless innovation. Sauté some peppers and onions to roll into the burritos, or bulk them up with cubes of sweet potato. You could also add nonfat plain Greek yogurt for a creamy tang. Plus, with a few basic ingredients, everyone can mix and match, ensuring a breakfast that can please a crowd without having to make at least 3 totally different entrees.

By prepping the ingredients the night before, you can make it even easier to make the burritos for breakfast. Just reheat everything while you scramble the eggs. You could even make and assemble breakfast burritos as a family and then freeze a bunch for later. All you’d need to do is reheat and go!

Here are some great ingredients that you can use in breakfast burritos. Which will you pick?

  • Scrambled eggs or egg whites
  • Scrambled tofu
  • Hot sauce
  • Salsa or pico de gallo
  • Drained and rinsed pinto or black beans
  • Cooked lentils
  • Shredded chicken
  • Sautéed peppers and onions
  • Brown rice
  • Cilantro
  • Tomatoes
  • Cubed sweet potatoes or potatoes

ParfaitBreakfast Option #2: Make Parfaits

You’ll minimize cleanup and maximize options with simple breakfast parfaits. And the best part is, everything is infinitely adaptable. Simply layer some granola, nonfat yogurt, and fruit in a glass and you’re good to go. Plus, you can make these in travel mugs if everyone really needs to get out the door in a hurry.

Here are a few fun combinations…

  • Strawberries, nonfat vanilla yogurt, and granola
  • Oranges, fortified soy yogurt, and oat cereal
  • Raspberries and blueberries, nonfat plain Greek yogurt, and granola
  • Apples, nonfat plain yogurt with cinnamon, and oat cereal

With protein, calcium, and fiber — not to mention vitamins — these parfaits are nutrient powerhouses.

OatmealBreakfast Option #3: Make Oatmeal

Oatmeal doesn’t deserve it’s blah reputation. With a myriad of toppings, it is infinitely adaptable, and quick-cooking varieties come together speedily, which makes them winners for the morning routine.

If you make a big pot of oatmeal, everyone can top it with whatever they wish. Or you can make different types throughout the week.

Since I’m such a big fan of oatmeal, I’ve made quite a few variations. Here are some of my favorite free recipes…

Smoothie1Breakfast Option #4: Smoothies for Everyone

Here’s another option that can be varied infinitely. Try a few different combinations to find out which ones are best for your family. All you need is…

  • Liquid
    • Skim milk
    • Calcium-fortified soy milk
    • Orange juice
    • Water
    • Nut milk
    • Green tea
  • Fruit
    • Strawberries
    • Blueberries
    • Pineapple
    • Mango
    • Cherries
    • Oranges
    • Apples
    • Banana
  • Smoothie2Ice
  • Extras
    • Nonfat plain Greek yogurt
    • Low-fat light vanilla yogurt
    • Peanut butter
    • Cocoa powder
    • Ground flaxseed
    • Cinnamon
    • Oats
    • Silken tofu

You can assemble these in the blender the night before, put the blender in the fridge overnight, then whirr everything together in the morning.

Oh, and for more smoothie inspiration, check out the free smoothie recipe collection.

Whew!

That was a lot of information about breakfast. Which options will your clients love? Which will you try? For a great recipe to help everyone get off on the right foot, try this Sunrise Smoothie, excerpted from our top-selling Home Run Meals Cookbook. The handout is free, it’s here, and it’s yours. Get your copy today!

Sunrise Smoothie Handout

If you like what you see in the handout, consider getting a copy of the Home Run Cooking Book. I wrote this book as the perfect introduction to healthful cooking, and included all of my favorite meals that have been home-runs for family and friends alike. This book walks its readers through grocery shopping, meal planning, proper knife use and safety, food safety, cooking with moist or dry heat, cooking basics, measuring basics, etc. Then it features a wide variety of guaranteed-hit recipes that have been rigorously tested and beautifully photographed, from breakfast to lunch to dinner, and even snacks and dessert! Get your book today!

Home Run Cooking

There are tons of other cooking resources in the Nutrition Education Store. Here are some of our newest bestsellers…

Learn to Cook Workbook

Kitchen Math and Measuring DVD

Portion Control Tearpad

Shopping Presentation

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Make Healthful Eating Fun!

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January is Soup Month!

Makes sense, right? It’s cold, gray, and winter is in full swing. With all that, what could sound better than a warming bowl of soup? Plus, so many people are making health resolutions at this time of year — soup is the perfect resolution food. Choosing a soup that is loaded with vegetables is a low-calorie way to get tons of nutrients and fiber, and it’s filling too!

Here’s one of my very favorite soups, perfect for this time of year. Enjoy!

Soup Month SoupRoasted Winter Vegetable Soup

Serves: 4 | Serving Size: 1 and 1/2 cups

1 butternut squash, halved, stemmed, and seeded
1/2 onion
1 yellow bell pepper
2 carrots
4 cups low-sodium vegetable broth
1 cup fat-free half and half
Dash black pepper
Dash hot pepper sauce

Place the vegetables in a roasting pan and roast for 90 minutes at 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

Puree the roasted veggies with the broth and fat-free half and half in a blender. It will take a few batches to puree all of the veggies until smooth. Don’t overfill the blender or the top may blow off!

Place puree back on the stove and bring to a simmer over low heat. Season with pepper and a little hot pepper sauce. Serve immediately or refrigerate for later use.

Nutrition Information:

This recipe makes 4 servings. Each 1 and 1/2 cup serving contains 194 calories, 3 g fat, 1 g saturated fat, 0 g trans fat, 3 mg cholesterol, 166 mg sodium, 39 g carbohydrate, 8 g fiber, 11 g sugar, and 9 g protein.

Each serving also has 561% DV vitamin A, 200% DV?vitamin C, 17% DV calcium, and 11% DV iron.

Chef’s Tips:

I love to show off the gorgeous color of this soup, so I serve it in onion soup crocks. Add a few whole grain crackers and a small salad for a perfectly light lunch or dinner.

Want to see more great January resources? Check out these options!

Take Control of Your Portions Poster

Phytochemical PowerPoint and Handout Set

Healthful Choices 1-2-3 Poster

I almost forgot! Here’s your free handout with this great soup recipe!

Soup Month Soup for Everyone

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Salad Secrets

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I had a mission. I was going to take pictures of all 1,000 recipes in the free recipe database.

Salad Secrets Cookbook and Demo Set

It didn’t seem especially daunting. I figured that I would print a copy of each recipe, then sort everything into piles of similar recipes. I would tackle salads, then fruits, pasta, rice, chicken, fish, veggies, beans, soups, holidays, desserts, etc.

As I began to sort, I was blown away by the hundreds and hundreds of salad recipes. There seemed to be way more salads than anything else. In fact, we had roughly 10 times the number of salads than recipes in any other category.

Since I had so many healthful salad recipes, I decided to take pictures of those first.

Little did I know that this would take a whole summer.

You see, once I started taking pictures of the salads, I got a little sidetracked. There were just so many wonderful recipes to share. I ended up putting all the salad recipes into a book and combining them with an instruction set. That’s how Salad Secrets was born.

I also posted some of my favorite salads and presentation tips on the Food and Health blog, and they quickly became some of the most popular posts I’d ever written. I shouldn’t really have been surprised — who doesn’t want to learn about healthful new ways to make tasty and creative salads?

Carrot Cake Salad from the Salad Secrets Cookbook

One of my best salad features was the carrot cake salad. It uses the same spices as carrot cake and can be served dessert-style in a stemmed glass. I was so pleased with the resources that I’d made to help people fall in love with salad. In fact, that delight soon led to the creation of a nutrition poster called Fall in Love with Salad.

Who knew that all of those wonderful nutrition education materials would come out of a simple photography project?

Of course, I eventually did get back on track. I finished my pile of salads, and you can see the recipes (with photos!) in the salad section of the free recipe database.

Once the salads were done, I decided to tackle fruit.

Well, that was my intention.

Home Run Cooking Book and Demo Program

The recipes just kept inspiring me, and before I knew it, I had compiled my favorite show-stopping fruit desserts into Fruit Tooth, a cookbook that helps people turn a sweet tooth into a “fruit tooth” with simple and delicious fruit desserts.

At that point, I decided to roll with it, turning the holiday recipes into Holiday Secrets, my best healthful holiday cooking book yet. That was quickly followed by the Home Run Cooking Book, which is basically a compilation of my very favorite recipes that I’ve ever created.

So, here we are in 2014, and I’ve still got a few stacks of recipes to photograph. Plus, I’m constantly adding new and exciting recipes to the database, which means that my to-do list is always growing.

But really, I’m sure I’ll finish it all any minute now.

By Judy Doherty PC II and Founder of Food and Health Communcations 

PS Because I love you, here’s a free handout with one of my latest salad creations, the Chicken Fajita Salad. Get your copy today!

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