Hi all,

I'm not a vegetarian or a vegan but I figure you guys are my best bet for help with my breakfasts. I love warm breakfasts and most days have a veggie omelet after I've exercised in the morning. I'm trying to cut down the costs of my groceries, however, and the thousands of cartons of egg whites and eggs that I buy seem an obvious place to start trimming. Since protein and fullness are important to me (and Kashi cereal leaves me hungry an hour later), I wondered about beans for breakfast.

Does anyone have a way of prepping beans that works for a morning stomach? Does anyone have any other non-egg, non-cereal suggestions for a warm and filling breakfast?

Thanks!

It depends what you define as a morning stomach. I've eaten regular beans for breakfast many times, I just heat them up and eat them. You can add tomatoes or other things to them as well.

Other options include Tofu scramble which I've never tried but I've heard is really good.
http://www.theppk.com/recipes/dbreci...p?RecipeID=110

Also, what about steel cut oatmeal made with a nondairy milk?

Or some kind of soup?

I like cold breakfasts so I tend to drink smoothies.

I like bean and cheese burritos for breakfast! Or anything else I would eat at any other time of day. Garden burger patties (not expensive if you make your own); cooked grains like rice, barley, millet, with beans -add cheese if you want; soups; peanut butter on a ________ (apple, bagel, slice of bread, whatever you like......)
My stomach is no different in the morning than any other time!

I love hot and cold bean pastes on toast or in a tortilla for breakfast (or anytime). I first got the idea and recipe from one of Susan Powter's books, when she was popular.

Basically, you drain a can of beans, put the beans in a food processessor, add any seasonings you'd like, and puree into a paste, adding a liquid ingredient if necessary to thin the paste. Even baked beans work great (though if you're not vegetarian and use pork n' beans, remove that disgusting little square of fat first).

By the way, I recently watched a documentary on how baked beans are made, and found out that the baked beans are completely vegtarian UNTIL they're put in the cans. They drop a cube of pork fat into the bottom, and then put the beans on top before they seal the cans. Does that make sense to anyone? I should mention that I am not a vegetarian, and do have a weakness for pork fat as a seasoning, but adding a cube of cold pork fat to the bottom of the can, is not going to add any flavor. It seems idiotic to me.

Colleen, I agree, that seems pointless with the cube of pork fat in the can!

I make my beans from dry beans. I think they taste better when I add my own seasonings while they are cooking. Especially bay leaf. Adds a real nice flavor. Don't add salt though until the end, or they get tough. You can cook up a big pot of beans, season as you like them and use them all week. Very inexpensive.
And sometimes I think canned beans taste like the inside of a can. (?)
Anyway, put them over brown rice - like a New Orleans red beans and rice, or on tortillas with some salsa - like huevos rancheros without the huevos!
Other ideas: baked potato with cottage cheese and or plain yogurt, leftover vegetable pizza, toasted cheese sandwich, ALT sandwich (avocado, lettuce and tomato).

More as I think of 'em -

jo

Thanks for the ideas guys. Keep 'em coming.

My favorite beans are black beans, seasoned with garlic, chipotle, cumin, coriander etc etc, but somehow they seem wrong for breakfast. (Although I do scramble them with egg whites pretty often.) I keep thinking of baked beans on toast, which was a classic breakfast where I grew up, but all the recipes I've looked at for baked beans have tons of sugar, which adds calories and GI problems.

The burrito idea is a good one. For a while I was making egg white and black bean breakfast burritos, topped with fresh pico de gallo. I stopped making those when the tomato season ended, but I could make a salsa from canned tomatoes and skip the egg whites in favor of a bit of cheese. The calories on that would add up though and I liked to keep breakfast around 300.

Hmm- that seasoning mix for your black beans sounds delicious!

I used to eat soup for breakfast and my roommates would look at me as though I had lost my mind. I may as well have been eating out of the garbage bin with a spoon for how strange they thought I was.

Glory87 has said before, though, something along the lines of.. "What. Are the food police going to haul me off?"

The important thing is to have a healthy start to your day!

I always thought it makes no sence to limit your food choices for breakfast. The whole idea of pastries and cereal for bkfst is totally cultural. In Asia they eat fish and rice for bkfst.
You should be able to eat a smaller portion of whatever you like to eat for lunch or dinner.
Try cooking dry beans overnight in a slow cooker with some chicken stock and seasonings - way better than canned and cheaper. Add a spoonfull of low-carb BBQ sauce and you have your BBQ beans minus all the sodium and "inside of a can" taste.
You can get a big tub of good salsa at Costco for under $10 and it lasts quite a while. 1/3 cup brown rice, 1/3 cup beans, spoonfull of salsa and if you like some mozarella or ricotta cheese, which are both low in fat naturally. Microwaive for 1 min (depending on your microwaive) until cheese melts if using mozarella. Ricotta doesn't need to melt. And Voila - Tex-Mex breakfast that is both healthy and filling. And tastes pretty damn good if I say so my self.
Hope this helps.

Baffled, why not skip the cheese and add some veggies? Beans and veggie burrito sounds good to me

Nina, I guess it depends where in Asia you are at. When I asked for rice and veggies for breakfast in China, they thought I was crazy. The traditional breakfast seemed to be a spicy noodle soup or rice porridge with sticky buns.

If you think about 100 calories of tortilla, 100 of beans, 100 for cheese and a neglible bit for salsa - there's your 300.

I might make mine a little bigger, add some plain yogurt, some lettuce if I have it, squeeze of lime..... But I eat my biggest meal in the morning, otherwise I can't think right.

I think black beans are great for breakfast! Why not? Sure as heck better than donuts or a lot of the crap that people ruin the beginning of their day with!

OH- I just remembered. A local restaurant serves Posole all day, but for breakfast they put an egg on top of it. Isn't it just so silly how conditioned people are? Add an egg to anything and it becomes "breakfast food." I say make it and skip the stupid egg. Here is a link to the recipe. (Rachael Ray had it when she was here for her Tasty Travels show.)
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/reci..._34097,00.html

If that link didn't work try this:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/cda/...5-CARD,00.html

Mmmm. I'd love to be able to have rice and fish for breakfast! Or spicy noodle soup! But actually, I eat soup for lunch every single day, so I need to do something different for breakfast.

A bean and veggie burrito sounds great. I could saute up onions and peppers, and even a little chicken breast, fajita style, and stuff it into a tortilla with the beans. I often use low-fat sour cream as a substitute for cheese, so that could work too. I never ever buy prepared salsas or sauces, but a cooked salsa is pretty easy to make and negligible on the calorie front.

Thanks for all the great suggestions! I feel heartened.

That Rachel Ray posole recipe isn't what I would call posole. I'm from California and the posole I know is bland. Menudo on the other hand is divine and great for breakfast. I plan to make menudo sans tripe in a few weeks. I've been missing it and I usually have it every winter.

Angie's posole is bland too...but I love it! It has chicken, hominy, onion and black olives in it with chicken broth. We have a friend 1/2 mexican, she comes for Christmas Eve...her dad cooks in her family...she looked at ours and said "That's NOT posole! It isn't red! Well, she loved Angie's but still said...not posole!