Farmhouse Breakfast Week Day #3

Today I thought I'd share my default breakfast. This is the breakfast I have most mornings. Despite appearances, I do not in fact spend every evening up to my elbows in bread flour, or lovingly composing home-made granola. This is a very quick, and not really home-made sort of a breakfast, but it's still very good, and very good for you. I started on this when I was trying to lose a bit of weight. It's not exactly low-calorie; it's more of a portion size thing - you don't need much of it to fill you up, and it keeps me going until lunchtime.

So, here it is: rye bread - the pumpernickel kind you buy in a dense brick that is pre-sliced into long thin slices. It keeps for ages unopened, and lasts a week opened, so I pick one up with the weekly shop. My favourite is an organic one with sunflower seeds that I get from Sainsburys. I keep meaning to try making my own, but I haven't got around to it yet - watch this space! I like it toasted, then a scraping of butter, some honey and a banana sliced on top. And that's it.

Not a great deal of vitamin C going on there though, and at this time of year I definitely need a bit of a vitamin boost to get me going in the morning, so I decided to inject a bit of zing into the day with a smoothie as well. I have some lovely pink forced rhubarb in my fridge. Rhubarb smoothie? Sounds weird, but if Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall says go for it, well, who am I to object? I added a few frozen raspberries to this, mostly in an effort to cool the rhubarb mixture a little more quickly, but otherwise the  recipe is as in the link above. It's good, and most definitely an improvement, aesthetically speaking, on MrB's super-smoothie. Look at that lovely orangy-pink pastel. Like a winter morning sky.

Note to self: I really must buy some more photogenic plates. Everyone else's blogs have lovely chintzy florals or willow patterns, and my bog standard Denbys are looking a bit institutional in all these pictures. They are actually rather nice in RL, all blue on the outside, but the photos are really not doing them, or my cooking, (or in this instance, my 'cooking') justice. I feel a charity shop mission coming on.

I'm having a day at the stove today, so new treats to come tomorrow!

Farmhouse Breakfast Week Day #2

Bitterly bitterly cold here today. It's trying so hard to snow but we're still more or less flake-free. So, a winter warmer of a breakfast was needed before the walk down to school.

Back in November, I was making porridge for St Andrew's Day and Bike Lights in the Fruit Bowl's Super Magic Porridge was the inspiration for this morning's breakfast: porridge made with almond milk, ground almonds and dates, with a little sprinkle of cinnamon. I'm not normally one for fiddling too much with porridge, but this was delicious - and just the ticket for a freezing cold morning. Especially one where I also have the dreaded tax return to get crossed off my to-do list for the day. Argh.

You don't need a recipe for this one, really, do you? It's porridge, made with almond milk (I got the unsweetened kind from Whole Foods Market). I added a couple of spoons of ground almonds and a handful of chopped dates as I was cooking it, and that's it really. No added sugar necessary, dairy free, if such things are important to you, quick, warm and delicious.

Now, all I have to do is go all the way back to school with the lunch money I forgot to hand in, make a cup of tea and HMRC, I'm all yours.

Happy Monday everyone.

Farmhouse Breakfast Week - day #1

This week, in case you've missed it, is Farmhouse Breakfast Week in the UK. The idea is to encourage people to eat breakfast and to emphasise the importance of a good start to the day. You can find out more and join in at the Shake Up your Wake Up website or with the hashtag #breakfastwatch on Twitter, where you can upload a photo of your fabulous breakfast to the gallery.

In an attempt to enter the spirit of things, I'm going to try and post every day this week. Today's been a bit of a write-off, blog-wise, because it's also smallest breakfastboy's 6th birthday, so we've been up to our ears in lego and birthday cake all day, and have spent the afternoon wrangling 6 year-old boys at the indoor ski slope (we seem to be the only part of the UK to remain resolutely snow-free this week). I now need to lie down in a darkened room.

Of course, birthday person gets to choose the breakfast. What he wanted: a sherbet fountain from a packet of retro sweeties he was given. I nixed this, I'm afraid, although he managed to snaffle it about half an hour later. I resisted the pestering until he'd eaten something a bit more substantial though, and we all had waffles with maple syrup and cream (small people), lemon juice and maple syrup (bigger people).

Hopefully back on track and a bit more lucid tomorrow!