Monday, March 20, 2006

My latest breakfast

I don't know about you, but I like the routine of the same breakfast every morning. Yes, I'm a "breakfast person," a "morning person."

Over the years I've changed my breakfasts. When I was a student in Stern College, I started the day with fried eggs in the student cafeteria, but on "test days" I treated myself to a "Spanish omelet."

There are times when I've eaten dry cereal with milk, or I breakfasted on eggs, or oatmeal. Whatever the breakfast is, it remains my standard for a number of years, until suddenly I feel that it's not keeping me going the way I need.

Generally I don't nosh between meals, though I've tried to start having a fruit or something like that, since diet experts now say that you can lose more weight on five meals a day than three, and sometimes, since I'm an early riser, the breaks between my three meals are really too long. And if you're curious to know, I am overweight, seriously overweight, even though I'm "fitter" than most.

During my final years as a vegetarian, which I was for twenty-five years, I had a two-egg vegetable omelet every morning. It included an onion, a squash and sometimes fresh garlic. On it I ground pepper, and when I had it I also ate horseraddish, which I "grind" in the food processor. And it was all "fried," or sauteed in olive oil in a regular frying pan.

Now that I eat poultry almost everyday, my morning needs changed. I have some bran flakes, sometimes a bit of puffed wheat, a diced or shredded (food processor) apple, a banana (when there are some in the house) and plain yogurt, either goat or 3% bio. For awhile I was adding dried fruit, but I began feeling a weight gain.

It seems like my body and food habits are beginning to recover from my change back into being carnivorous.

Since I eat kosher, I'm not going to start the day with meat or poultry.

And I drink my coffee before I eat. First I have a few cups of water, then the coffee, which helps "eliminate" yesterday's food. Only after that do I have my breakfast.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What prompted you to stop being a vegetarian after so long? My wife Janet was a vegetarian and stopped many years ago, but recently went back to it, probably under the influence of the yoga teachers' course that she is doing. And that with my son being a shochet (ritual slaughterer)!

Batya said...

I was hungry. I found myself noshing too much, looking for energy, and I was tempted by meat. Considering that meat and poultry and fish are all permitted according to Jewish Law, and my daughter said that she read that O blood thrives best on a carnivorous diet, I just bit in. Afterwards I had a blood test and discovered that my B12 was seriously low, which is a danger of vegetarianism. The doctor would have prescribed injections if I hadn't changed my diet already.