No Salad For Breakfast

Late in the fall we got a fundraising plea from our niece and nephew to buy magazines to help their school. I may work for a magazine that you can only get in paper format, but outside of mine I really only read magazines on my I-pad. Since I can get over 300 of them through my public library I don’t usually pay for them.

I did not want to disappoint the kids so I subscribed to Cooking Light and Real Simple. Unlike most fundraising scheme these came in record time, just as the Christmas mail was piling up. I let the paper issues pile up by my bed, the reason I stopped getting real magazines, until last night when I picked up a Cooking Light issue. Given that my house is on the healthy eating kick in earnest I thought it would not hurt to get a little inspiration.

I flipped open the book, (what people in the magazine business call them) to an article about breakfast salads. I am not talking fruit salad with yogurt, but greens or bean salads that all sound perfect for lunch. Now I am a salad-aholic. I do my best pound dropping if I am eating a salad for lunch and dinner. But somehow I just can’t bring myself to eat salad greens with vinegar for breakfast.

I really like a poached egg on a salad so that when you poke the yolk in runs all over the arugula and gives me that fat mouth feel, but even that is something I want anytime of day other than breakfast.

Russ really likes a strong flavored savory breakfast such as scrambled eggs with mushrooms, onions, chorizo and Sriracha, but I think even he has drawn the line at a breakfast salad. I have a hard enough time getting Carter to eat a cereal; I can only imagine the nose turning I would get at a salad for breakfast.

The article suggested to the reader to avoid overly strong flavors, but then the first recipe included radishes, not my idea of a mild morning item. Another suggestion was, “Keep it simple- you don’t have time to fuss with a lot of prep.” Absolutely right, so why is there a salad made up of cooked farro, which takes 25 minutes on it’s own.

I know how hard it is to come up with new and interesting healthy things to eat. One of the biggest problems with most diets is people get bored on them. But even I am going to have to draw the line at breakfast salads, except for fruit salad.

Creating a magazine is hard work, so good try Cooking Light. The salad recipes you came up with for this article are beautiful and sound delicious, just for lunch or dinner. For me I am sticking with my High Protein Special K with raspberries or blackberries. It satisfies all your suggestions; it is not an overly strong flavor, it includes protein, it is simple and has good texture. The only thing it does not do is add variety to my day. That’s OK with me. It only takes me 20 seconds to prepare it and that is the big bonus in my book.