Eat and Get Out: Stupid Breakfast.

I have a new job. Hooray! But I can no longer have a buffet at my desk and snarf my way through the day. Booo. I've noticed that my breakfasts, when I bothered eating them, consisted of yogurt and bread (cereal, toast, bagels, etc). My go-to protein is eggs. Since I'm supposed to limit cholesterol and carbs, and a high-carb diet keeps me full for approximately 8 seconds, I have to figure out something else to do since I have to wait 6 hours until my next meal (!). At 5am, my brain allows me to stumble around, breathe, and shower. I'm lucky if I can open both eyes at the same time. Screw you, most important meal of the day.

Any ideas for quick, high-protein, relatively healthy breakfast chow?

Cottage cheese does it for me. It is metabolized slowly.

I'm partial to the odd but tasty combo of oatmeal mixed with cottage cheese, a couple teaspoons of almond meal and a little sweetener. If you use the same amount of cottage cheese & uncooked oats, you can balance it so it's about 40% carbs, 30% protein and 30% fat, which is what the experts seem to recommend to avoid spiking your blood sugar and then crashing. It's also pretty low on the glycemic index. I know you said you're supposed to avoid a lot of carbs & watch your cholesterol. This admittedly has carbs, but it's good for your cholesterol!

I like savory breakfasts, so cottage cheese with chopped veggies (celery, cherry tomatoes, sweet red pepper, etc.); or hummus is also a wonderful breakfast -- with celery and radishes and carrots if you are going to be fanatic about carbs and not use bread. Five minute oatmeal cooked with half milk/half water keeps me full until lunch, too.

In a pinch: Nature Valley Roasted Nut Crunch Almond Crunch bars -- two = 380 calories, more protein and fiber than carb. Be careful buying these, lots of the Nature Valley bars have way more carb / sugar (and also taste awful). Not available everywhere, but at Mariano's I can find them -- and they are delicious (better than Kind bars).

Judy H wrote:In a pinch: Nature Valley Roasted Nut Crunch Almond Crunch bars -- two = 380 calories, more protein and fiber than carb. Be careful buying these, lots of the Nature Valley bars have way more carb / sugar (and also taste awful). Not available everywhere, but at Mariano's I can find them -- and they are delicious (better than Kind bars).

FYI, Walmart carries these, $2.94 a box (I just picked some up today, they are good emergency snack food to carry in my purse).

tuna salad (prepared the night before).

Mmm. So far, so good! I never thought of mixing cottage cheese with so many different things! Keep 'em comin!

Sauteed tofu. If you use nutritional yeast on the surface it gets a punch of umami and dries out enough to give it some texture. Brown rice vs. white is a good carb. Or tofu in miso soup if you can do the salt. I also enjoy herring or sardines on that moist German whole grain bread with very thin slices.

Pie Lady wrote:I have a new job. Hooray! But I can no longer have a buffet at my desk and snarf my way through the day. Booo. I've noticed that my breakfasts, when I bothered eating them, consisted of yogurt and bread (cereal, toast, bagels, etc). My go-to protein is eggs. Since I'm supposed to limit cholesterol and carbs, and a high-carb diet keeps me full for approximately 8 seconds, I have to figure out something else to do since I have to wait 6 hours until my next meal (!). At 5am, my brain allows me to stumble around, breathe, and shower. I'm lucky if I can open both eyes at the same time. Screw you, most important meal of the day.

Any ideas for quick, high-protein, relatively healthy breakfast chow?

The thread "You eat WHAT for breakfast?" might give you some ideas, especially from the point where I revived it due to a similar quandary:

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2366&start=90

Good luck; I am still trying to figure out what I can fix quickly that will have the requisite calories and be satisfying for a decent amount of time.

Aha! I forgot about that thread.

I like yogurt with lots of nuts or oatmeal with lots of nuts. I've discovered big bags of cheap nuts at Aldi- chopped walnuts and almonds.
When I was doing a low-carb diet, I would make breakfast quiche muffins by baking a mixture of riccotta and egg with whatever else you like. I would make some sweet (nuts and cinnamon and sweetner) and some savory (cheese, veg, meat). They would last me all week.

Pie Lady wrote:I have a new job. Hooray! But ... I'm lucky if I can open both eyes at the same time. Screw you, most important meal of the day.

Congratulations to you and hooray! I am just like you and some other posters--don't feel hungry in the morning, don't much like traditional breakfasts, prefer savory to sweet, since I started new job I have to get up and be working much earlier than my body clock would suggest.

I like the tuna fish sandwich idea--maybe do tuna fish on whole wheat toast with mayo and a slice of cheese and a piece of iceberg lettuce. I also like the idea of having some tuna fish (or some egg salad) made the night before, and assembling the sandwich in the morning. The idea of making the whole sandwich the night before is appealing, but soggy bread is not appealing. Worst example from my own experience: salted radish and butter sandwich. Made in the morning, crunchy and delicious. Made the night before, mushy bread.

I like yogurt (currently testing out Chobani lemon and peach flavors), but I don't like whatever it is about yogurt that seems to accentuate the tannins in my morning cup of tea, making my mouth pucker up and killing the sweetness of the tea. The tea with milk and sugar is what I most want in the morning; I don't like yogurt ruining that.

I find a two-lunch strategy often works for me: nothing but tea when I first wake up, something to eat about 10 am, something to eat again at about 2:30 pm.

Another savory breakfast idea: a toasted bagel with (not all at once) butter, cream cheese, smoked salmon, sliced ham, Merkt's cheese, whatever else you like.

Another idea: homemade Egg McMuffin. Toast the English muffin (I would butter it, McDonald's doesn't), slice of cheese, slice of ham or Canadian bacon, fried egg. I was tickled to find the other day, at Sunset Foods, frozen hash brown patties. Heat up a pair in the toaster while you're frying your McMuffin egg.

For both English muffins and bagels, peanut butter and jelly are good topping options for USofAns (Irish/UKans might want to look away).

Steel-cut oatmeal *should* be another option, but I just can't put together enough energy to both make it and eat it, whether I spread it out over the night before and the morning or do it all in the morning.

I put fruit and plain yogurt and Kashi Go Lean (or Go Lean Crunch, or both, and also sometimes nuts) into a container and eat that when I get hungry. I just can't eat first thing in the AM.

In winter I get the bags of frozen berries from Costco (also avail at Trader Joe's), in the summer usually it's whatever is at the farmer's market and I chop or wash the fruit when I'm making dinner. It's easy to do in the AM and doesn't suffer much from being done the night before (as long as you put the fruit under the yogurt it doesn't get oxidized). I don't usually put the cereal in the night before, just the fruit and yogurt and pop it into the fridge.

As a snack, try nuts. To avoid eating massive handsful of them I put whatever a serving is supposed to be into a little re-usable container and pop it into my bag.

Pie Lady wrote:I have a new job. Hooray! But I can no longer have a buffet at my desk and snarf my way through the day. Booo. I've noticed that my breakfasts, when I bothered eating them, consisted of yogurt and bread (cereal, toast, bagels, etc). My go-to protein is eggs. Since I'm supposed to limit cholesterol and carbs, and a high-carb diet keeps me full for approximately 8 seconds, I have to figure out something else to do since I have to wait 6 hours until my next meal (!). At 5am, my brain allows me to stumble around, breathe, and shower. I'm lucky if I can open both eyes at the same time. Screw you, most important meal of the day.

Any ideas for quick, high-protein, relatively healthy breakfast chow?

Some sort of salumi and crackers seems to be the way to go. I like to spread PQM's 'nduja on pretty much anything that can hold it - crackers, bagels, pretzels, tortillas chips, sliced cucumbers (surprisingly delicious) and fried plantains.

What if you poached a couple eggs the night before, and refrigerate them for a breakfast sandwich in the morning?

Lifeway makes a low carb high protein kefir that does the trick for me. I cannot consume a lot of carbs, especially sugars in the morning. I usually work my way through quart of kefir a few gulps at a time throughout the morning. I am also lactose intolerant, but the probiotics in the kefir takes care of that. If I crave something more solid, I will actually dump a 50 cent bag of peanuts right into the kefir.

For those who like sweeter breakfasts, but cannot handle sucrose, agave nectar tastes sweet, but is metabolized at a fraction of the rate than other sugars, so it has less of an impact on the insulin levels in your blood. I like oatmeal mixed with a couple of table spoons of plain yogurt and sweetened with a drizzle of agave syrup. Some people are very allergic to Agave, so it should be used with caution. It is also metabolized in the liver, so large quantities are not good for you.

I do not like savory things for breakfast so something like tuna fish would not work for me. Plus it has to be fast and easy.

I would eat a piece of toast with peanut butter or I like the yogurt and nuts and fruit idea. Fast and easy. I love peanut butter on rye toast. True it does have fat in it but its got a good hit of protein.

My go-to breakfast starts with either yogurt or cut fruit, then a toasted onion bialy (from NY Bagel & Bialy in Lincolnwood), easy on the light cream cheese and no more than 2 oz. nova lox. And one cup black coffee. Holds me for a good 5-6 hours.

I got onto this when visiting Manhattan a few years ago, didn't want to pay an exorbitant price for a hotel breakfast & happened upon Ess-a-Bagel. Found that for me, a savory breakfast always works better & fish is better fuel for me in the morning.

FYI, wife does her own version of an Egg McMuffin (similar to Katie's upthread)--a toasted Thomas light multi-grain English muffin, butter spray on one side, one slice of Rose's Canadian bacon, and one egg scrambled with cracked black pepper & a little Parmesan cheese. Good sandwich!

A good make-ahead and take it to-go breakfast are the egg muffins. i just made a batch last night that consisted of:

4 egg whites
2 whole eggs
1 cup cooked red quinoa
3 slices of bacon, chopped and cooked
quick saute of diced/sliced/chopped veggies and/or raw veggies (i used kale, chard, zucchini, creminis, onion)
1/2 cup of grated cheddar

Whisked the eggs with S+P and mixed in the cooked quinoa. Evenly distributed bacon bits into each muffin cup, then followed with the veggies and the cheese. Ladled in the egg mixture and gave a quick stir with a toothpick to make sure the eggs were blended in. If i had any on hand, i would have snipped some chives, spring onions, or the like on top of each one. Baked in silicone muffin cups (pops right out; otherwise, make sure the muffin tin is well greased) for about 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees.

This morning, I popped a couple of them in a ziplock and took them with me to the office. Ate them at room temp around 1030am. Very satisfying, esp. with the quinoa. And you can pretty much customize it to whatever your egg, veg, cheese, and flavor preferences are.

shyne

Neato. I have some leftover grain of some kind I've been looking to use up.

I've been eating home-made meusli for breakfast for the past year or so. I think it helped improve my husband's cholesterol scores. Any, just dump into a large bowl 2 cups of rolled oats (or a combo of other rolled grains); a cup of nuts or seeds (whole or chopped to whatever size you like); a cup of dried fruit - mix together and that's basically it, though I also add some fine salt, ground flax seeds, a generous amount of cinnamon and a little brown sugar. Makes a quart, lasts the 2 of us about a week. To serve, I let it soak in some soymilk for about 15 min, then add a dollop of plain yogurt or kefir.

You don't have to cook it?

Muesli is not cooked and is usually, in fact, based on uncooked rolled oats (among other things). Whether here or in those countries where I've had it, like Switzerland, I've usually had it over yogurt with honey. Or with milk.

Eggs are a great source of protein, and all the recent research indicates that they boost HDL cholesterol (the good stuff) and make LDL less likely to stick to cell walls. So, in fact, people who eat eggs every few days often have lower cholesterol and fewer heart problems than folks who eat no eggs. If you get vegetarian-fed eggs, such as Egglands Best, you're also getting a blast of Omega 3s, plus lecithin and choline and a bunch of other useful nutrients.

So feel free to include some eggs in your diet -- the golden standard for bio-availability of protein, and in reasonable amounts, good for your heart -- and your eyes (eating the yolks helps prevent macular degeneration).

Now that I learned how to properly boil eggs, I ate quite a few of those last week. Just for fun, I should leave early enough to take myself out someplace, only I don't know of a breakfast place near work so I can have an omelette without doing any work.

Pie Lady wrote:You don't have to cook it?

Gypsy Boy is correct. Meusli does not need to be cooked. If you prefer a softer texture, you can soak it longer, even overnight. Some people use fruit juice or water to soak instead of milk. Adding a grated apple is also traditional.

I wanted to add an even quicker way to make meusli - combine 2 cups of oats (or other rolled grains) with 2 cups of store-bought trail mix. Use trail mix that's all nuts and dried fruit, not the kind with chocolate chips or m&ms! Target has several great varieties. That's it.