Breakfast, The Skippable Meal

I know, I know: nutritionists always tell you that breakfast is important, that people who eat breakfast are thinner, more active, and generally smarter and better-looking than the losers who skip it. For much of my life I've been a breakfast-skipper, and often still am; sometimes I'm just not hungry until late in the morning.

It's not that I don't like breakfast. I do. I particularly like it on vacation, when somebody else is frying the eggs and bacon. Of course, even breakfast is not immune to the immense portion sizes most restaurants seem to dish out these days. For example, the hotel where we stay in Las Vegas has quite a decent coffee shop-type restaurant, with good breakfasts. But even though we order the smallest breakfast plate (one egg, choice of bacon or sausage, hash browns and toast), that's still a ton of food. The hash browns (which we rarely eat and need to remember to tell them to leave off) take up half the plate and there are two slices of toast to complete the carbohydrate festival. Unfortunately for my restraint, their toast is notably good; I get the sourdough, Fred gets the wheat, and it comes lavishly buttered for you. I can usually make myself leave half of one slice but leaving a full slice behind is something of a struggle. The good news, though, is that we can gamble right on through lunch and not have to eat until late in the afternoon.

I don't cook breakfast for Fred during the week, since he leaves for work at 5 a.m. (Five a.m.!) On the weekends, though, I do fix breakfasts, usually featuring over easy or sunny side up eggs, bacon, and toast. Sometimes I fix pancakes, though Fred had his fill of pancakes in his scouting days so I don't make them too often. He's not fond of waffles so when I make them, they're just for me. I don't crave waffles very often but now and again, I do, so I make them in my Belgian waffle maker which was a wedding shower gift back in 1991. Still works! He likes French toast, I don't, so when I make that I usually don't make any for myself. We actually don't have that many shared breakfast likes, the exceptions being bacon and toast. He doesn't like biscuits, so I almost never make them, despite the fact they were always one of my favorite foods, especially with gravy, but I can't even remember the last time I had biscuits and gravy.

During weekdays, when I do want breakfast, I often turn to a smoothie. Ellie Krieger has some great recipes in her two cookbooks, and the one below is one I adapted from her. I cut up bananas and keep them in the freezer, but if you happen to be out of frozen bananas when you get an urge for a smoothie like this, it works ok to use a non-frozen banana plus a handful of ice cubes.

Banana Peanut Butter Smoothie

1/4 c. plain fat-free Greek or regular yogurt
1/2 c. skim milk
1 Tbls. peanut butter
1 banana, cut into chunks and frozen
2 Tbls. toasted wheat germ
1 tsp. honey
1/4 tsp. vanilla

Put all ingredients into blender and puree.

You could certainly skip the wheat germ if you felt like it. The new KitchenAid blender I bought a few months back is terrific at liquifying everything, but my old one (a cheap model I probably bought at Wal-Mart sometime in the early to mid '90s) was barely one step up from a wooden spoon and didn't incorporate the wheat germ hardly at all. So feel free to skip it if you have a crappy blender or you don't feel like buying wheat germ because you'll hardly ever use it or you don't like it . . . or, hey, you don't have to explain yourself to me! Just do what you like.

Recommended reading: "Breakfast in Bed," by Jesse Ziff Cool. The recipes are what I might call upscale simple. The Cinnamon-Brown Sugar drop biscuits are fabulous. I kind of have to wait for company to make them, though, since they're not Fred's cup of tea, though the recipe does say you can freeze the unbaked biscuits. Maybe I'll try that sometime, since that way I could just bake one or two at a time.