Tag Archives: breakfast

Sweet Potato Pie Oatmeal in the Slow Cooker

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sweet potato pie oatmealWhen I was in high school, my neighbor Mr. Androw used to save his dessert to eat the next morning for breakfast. “I don’t see any real difference between coffee cake and regular cake,” he insisted. I always admired him for this stance, and if I haven’t followed suit, it’s probably only due to social convention. I hope he’s still out there fighting the breakfast powers that be.

If you’re not ready to embrace a slice of pie as part of a healthy breakfast, this oatmeal will provide an excellent compromise. It is stick-to-your-ribs hearty, plus it allowed me to use my crockpot which had somehow gone unused for an entire blizzard, plus it helped me plow through our generous supply of CSA sweet potatoes. Did I mention it was delicious?

I used almond milk, and I liked the way the flavor worked with the oats, but you can also use regular milk or soy milk or whatever your favorite milky substance happens to be. It’s your call.

Sweet Potato Pie Oatmeal Continue reading →

Andrew Leahey’s Kale Banana Peanut Butter Smoothie

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For Christmas, my brother and sister-in-law gave us a homemade cookbook entitled Rock N Eat.  We talk like this.  It’s part of our culture.

The first entry is for a kale banana peanut butter smoothie and it starts, “This is much better than it sounds.”

It is.

I mean, it’s shockingly tasty.  I like kale a lot, though I don’t think I’d be too psyched for a kale-flavored breakfast, and thankfully the kale taste is nowhere to be found in this smoothie.  It’s all banana and peanut butter goodness, reducing the kale’s presence to tiny flecks while bestowing all the nutrition of raw kale, which is, as Andrew writes, “pretty much the best thing you can put into your body.” Continue reading →

Carrot Cake Breakfast Porridge

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carrot cake for breakfastThere are some food textures that I cannot abide. Enormous hunks of sun-dried tomato make me gag; the mealy, fibrous feel of some kinds of squash turns my stomach. The soggy consistency of overcooked, waterlogged rice might top both of these, however, on my personally calibrated grossness scale. Last week, when Jason got distracted with multiple other components of an ambitious dinner and let the brown rice go too long, I just couldn’t eat it. But since both of us hate wasting food, the conundrum became what to do with a giant pot of leftover rice.

Thus began my scheming for a grand resurrection of the watery grains. In the past, I’ve enjoyed both a Moosewood recipe for stovetop rice pudding and a slow cooker recipe for oatmeal that tastes like pumpkin pie, so I thought I might be able to combine them into a yummy weekend breakfast. Also, we had an abundance of carrots in the fridge after Jason found a mother lode of root vegetables at the farmers market, and when I recalled that I do now have a modicum of carrot cake experience, a plan began to take shape.

Below is the recipe that I came up with. When the rice was cooked with almond milk until it had the consistency of oatmeal, I no longer found it repulsive. And despite having the word “cake” in the name, most of the ingredients are terrifically healthy. You deserve a merit badge, however, if you manage to leave off the cream cheese (cheese of wonder!) and honey glaze that I added at the end for a boost of carrot cake flavor and a touch of decadence. Continue reading →