[Suzanne 3FC]

Do you have any suggestions for breakfasts?

Here is what Nancy Jenkins says about breakfast in the Mediterranean Diet Cookbook:

In Mediterranean countries many people don't even consider breakfast a meal. And it's been that way for a long time. In the late MIddle Ages, Francesco di Marco Datini, an anxious, fretful, but eminently successful wool merchant from Prato, the industrial town north of Florence, took no breakfast at all. In that, says his biographer Iris Origo, Datini was like most people of his time, in Tuscany and elsewhere. Those who ate breakfast did so only for therapeutic reasons, often to combat the threat of plague. In any case, since coffee and tea were unknown, such a breakfast was but a piece of toasted bread and a glass of wine.

....

There are parts of the Mediterranean, though, where breakfast would make even a home economist content: In Morocco, workers stop at street corner holes-in-the-wal for thick purees of stewed fava beans, mixed with olive oil and redolent of garlic, with glasses of mint tea to wash it down. In Barcelona, along with the obligatory cafe con leche, breafasters munch on pa amb tomaquet (pahm toh-MAH-kett), glorious small buns of baguette bread, split and lightly toasted, rubbed with garlic and halves of dead-ripe red cherry tomatoes, smashed well into the bread, and topped with olive oil.

My all time favorite Mediterranean breakfast, however, comes from the Levant. Tewfiq Salah, a large and ebullient Palestinian who served as our occasional driver in Beirut, introduced me to this one morning many years ago at the start of a trip over the mountains to Damascus. Once the introduction was made, I was hooked for life.

The Continental Hotel, where the Beirut drivers had their headquarters, was not far from the university. In the freshness of early morning, when even in summer a breath of cool air off the sea bathes the city, I would walk up the hill to a idewalk cafe to join Tewfiq for coffee and bread from a nearby bakery, fresh from the oven, its aromas rich and complex with the fragrance of yeast and roasted wheat. This was usually Arab bread, khubz'arabee, flat and thick, sometimes lightly sprinkled with a delicious mixture of olive oil, wild thyme called za'atar, sesame seeds, and crushed sumac berries with their pleasant lemony astringency. Sometimes there was also khubz marquok, mountain bread, thin as flour tortilla and used in a similar way, like a spoon to scoop up creamy yogurt made from fresh goat's milk. With the yogurt we had olives - fat, aromatic black ones and crisp, bitter green ones - along with young scallions and radishes. And like many Middle Easterners, Tewfiq always began the day with ful medames made with small brown Egyptian fava beans.

This kind of breakfast is nutritional perfection - fiber rich beans and bread, plenty of fresh vegetables, yogurt for calcium, and an abundance of the good fat - olive oil.

[Suzanne 3FC]

Here are some breakfast suggestions from the Medieterranean Diet by Marissa Cloutier. These are a little more Americanized than the examples above. I personally would go with skim milk, my many attempts at enjoying soy milk have failed miserably.

1 cup oatmeal, made from whole oats, topped with fresh blueberries and 1 tbsp raw walnuts
1 cup low fat, calcium fortified soy milk

Orange banana muffins, soy milk, and berries

Eggs (1 whole egg and 2 egg whites) scrambled with skim milk, pepper, and herbs
toast
grapefruit

flaxseed cereal, soy milk, dates

almond couscous
mandarin oranges

mushroom fritatta, toast, soy milk

[LindaT]

This is my own creation. I make a bunch of these in advance and freeze them. They do taste better when freshly made, but who has the time in the mornings?

Saute some garlic and spinach (or any veggies you prefer, mushrooms, zucchini.. etc.) in a non stick pan (or use olive oil). Pour in 1/4 cup of egg beaters ( on one beaten whole egg). Cook til done. Cook this like an omlete in a small pan, flip in half then in half again. Toast a whole wheat english muffin. Spread this with some ff cream cheese, tofu cheese, almond cheese or even yogurt cheese would be good. Cook up a couple of ounces of soy sausage ( I use gimmee lean) in a patty. Pile the sausage patty and the folded omlete in the muffin. Voila. Breakfast.

This gives you some whole wheat, olive oil, veggies, eggs, soy protein and some dairy.

I am a BIG fan of steel cut oats over the traditional rolled oats. Wonderful with some skim milk and Sugar Free Torani Syrup.

I love soy milk. My favorite is Soy Slender Vanilla Flavored, which is made with Splenda. A lot of soy milks are just packed with sugar! I do need to get some dates. I love those.

mmm I'm making pumpkin chili today. House smells great.

[liz321]

I had 12 grain toast and an egg cooked with a bit of butter.....its a start!

Eliz

[scrappinitblue]

I usually eat oatmeal or cheerios for breakfast with 1% milk and then have a banana or a piece of citrus fruit with it. If I feel like cooking we have a simple veggie omelette with multigrain toast, or poached eggs and multigrain toast. In my oatmeal I add a tblsp of walnuts and 1/2 a tblsp of dried cranberries with 1 tsp of brown sugar and 1/2 cup of 1% milk. It's helped me to be able to eat something I previously hated!

Wanda

[juitsy]

Great post!

Where do I find steel cut oats and what is the difference?
Thanks

[Suzanne 3FC]

Hi Juitsy The regular oats that we are used to (Quaker) are rolled oats - flat. Steel cut are whole oats that have been sliced by steel blades, and they are a little thicker and chewier than rolled oats. They are also known as Irish oats, and are a little harder to find. There is a better description on the McCanns oatmeal page at
http://www.mccanns.ie/pages/products1.html

I've still not tried them