breakfast Archives

Better Instant Oatmeal

April 28, 2015 Kelly

I tried overnight oats. Honestly I think they’re kinda gross. I don’t want cold gloppy oatmeal in the morning and I definitely don’t want 16oz of it.

So instead I put together some “instant oatmeal” jars. All I have to do in the morning is add hot water. They’re cheap, brain dead, and very portable.

Each jar contains:

1/2 cup dry quick oatmeal
1 tbsp chia seeds (for antioxidants!)
1 tbsp flaxseed meal (for omega 3s!)
2 tsp fiber powder (for pooping!)

Then for flavor I add one of the following:

a tablespoon of craisins or other dried fruit
a tablespoon of peanut butter
cinnamon

I measure everything out into 8oz mason jars and leave them on top of the microwave. In the morning I use the hot water kettle to fill them to just below the lip of the glass. You could also put cold water in and nuke them in the microwave. Make sure you give it a good stir, and let it sit for a few minutes. Everything will swell into a delicious gooey oatmeal.

Pro tip: turn the oatmeal upside down and shake it (with the lid on) before adding water. This helps some of the smaller bits get mixed and rise to the top. Otherwise you can end up with a gelatinous clump of chia seeds which is not very appetizing.

Cooking, Recipes

Egg White Breakfast Muffins

March 5, 2014June 4, 2014 Kelly

In an effort to cut down on sugar I’ve replaced my yogurt and granola breakfast with egg “muffins.” They’re really more like a crustless quiche but they’re made in a muffin tin, and make a really good brain-dead breakfast with plenty of protein. You can make them with whatever ingredients you’ve got handy, and I’ve tried a bunch of different combos, including whole eggs, but the recipe below is my favorite so far.

Egg White Breakfast Muffins

Makes 8 egg “muffins”

Ingredients

8 egg whites1
A handful of baby spinach, chopped
2 mushrooms, diced
1/2 cup reduced fat shredded cheddar cheese2
1/4 tsp salt or to taste
1/4 tsp pepper or to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Whisking with a fork, combine egg whites, spinach, and mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper. Divide egg mixture evenly into eight spaces of a muffin tin (if not using a nonstick tin, spray with oil or cooking spray first). Top each cup with cheddar cheese. Bake for 20 minutes or until just beginning to brown at the edges.

I find they come out best if I only fill the cups about half way. Beyond that they get very tall and puffy in the oven, and then collapse like a bounce house at the end of a carnival.

The muffins keep well in the fridge. In the morning just pop one in the microwave for a minute and you’re good to go. You can also freeze them, just make sure you allow them to cool before freezing to minimize the formation of ice crystals.

If you’re using whole eggs you may get more like 10 or 12 muffins out of the recipe, but here’s the nutrition breakdown using the above ingredients:

42 calories
1g carbohydrates
2g fat
6g protein
<1g sugar and fiber3

As a delightful surprise, these are toddler approved! I’m not sure how much longer we’ll go before she notices the spinach and starts to pick it out, but for now it’s a great way to sneak some veggies into my almost-two year old.

If you don’t have another use for the yolks I really suggest eating them instead of wasting them, they’re good for you. [↩]
Full fat cheese works too, of course [↩]
you get a little from the veggies but not much [↩]

Cooking

Cinnamon Rolls of Doom

December 7, 2011 Kelly

We make these when we’re afraid we’re not getting enough fat and sugar in our diets. Or when we want to make doubly sure we’re well on our way to type 2 diabetes.

My mother found this cinnamon bun recipe a few years ago, which uses nearly 3 cups of butter and 5.5 cups of sugar for 12-15 rolls. In short, these are terrible for you. But delicious.

First, you make a sugary, buttery dough, roll it into a slab, and cover it in sugar, butter, and cinnamon.

Then you roll it into a log and slice it into 12 to 15 pieces of even width. The sharper the knife, the better your results.

Then you fill a pan with melted butter and place the raw cinnamon rolls in the buttery bath.

Our pan was maybe a little too small.

While they’re still hot, slather them with the frosting you made while they baked. Frosting is, of course, made up of two things: butter and sugar.

Then you invite all your friends over to eat them! That way you can all become morbidly obese together.

Cooking

Muffin Tin Pancakes

November 13, 2011 Kelly

My Pinterest stream is mostly home decor and food. When I saw the photo for these mini german pancakes, I knew they had to be mine.

I skipped the orange zest, for lack of an orange, but otherwise made the recipe as written. I used a nonstick muffin pan, but greased it anyway for maximum nonstickness.

The pancakes puffed up in the oven, but I knew it wouldn’t last.

30 seconds out of the heat, the pancakes began slowly collapsing like the Ottoman empire. They actually did a little dance as they deflated and settled back into the muffin cups. It’s possible I did not blend the butter well enough, because each pancake has a little pool of melted butter sitting in the middle. What a delicious problem.

The recipe in the original blog post uses a homemade triple berry compote. Delicious as that sounds, I only have the energy for one cooking adventure in the morning. Instead we used store-bought pastry filling. That’s right, call the food blog police.

As with most of my cooking adventures, they didn’t come out nearly as picturesque as the ones in the recipe photo. I’d like to take this opportunity to blame the lighting, and not my cooking. In a fit of cleaning up I finally removed the stand flash from the living room, so light was a bit hard to come by.

They came out pretty tasty, though in my zeal for getting out all the lumps of flour I managed to over beat the eggs pretty significantly. This made things a little more rubbery than I prefer. The pie filling was a little sweet for my tastes, so next time I’ll just slice up some banana to put on them.