Planning Beautiful Breakfasts for Breaking Your Fast in Style
By: Jean Anne Feldeisen
Tags: Family, Breakfast, Cooking, Food, Meal Planning

Planning Beautiful Breakfasts for Breaking Your Fast in Style

Using the Meal Planner Form for breakfast

Photo by Ben Kolde on Unsplash

Breakfast can be the most insignificant meal. Or the most important. It’s totally up to you, different each day. I think this is the most difficult meal to plan ahead because of – Who knows how you’ll feel in the morning a week ahead of time?

Sometimes you’re full from the day before and don’t want anything for hours, other times you’re starving. Sometimes you want something simple or some specific thing you dreamed about in the night.

This morning I wanted a meatloaf sandwich. We had hot meatloaf and potatoes and gravy last night and I knew there was meatloaf and bread available. A little catsup, salt and pepper. We split one sandwich with our coffee and felt satisfied. Sometimes we have more time, and want more of a celebratory meal.

But, planning has advantages, too. If you want Shakshuka (a Arabic dish of eggs poached in a spicy sauce of tomatoes and peppers) for breakfast, you need a recipe and all the ingredients if you want to make it at 7 am. My thought is to plan but be flexible. Then, if you have the ingredients but aren’t in the mood, you can save them for tomorrow, or perhaps for lunch.

So I still say, plan your meals. Sometimes in the morning, you don’t want to have to make any decisions. You can simply look on the list and get out the stuff without much dithering about what to eat. That works a lot of the time.

The Meal Planner up to now

This is the fourth in a series of articles about using a meal planning form I created. The first an introduction to the scheme, then a story about planning dinners, then one about lunches, this one is on breakfast.

The first thing to do on the form is answer five questions:

What do you have in refrigerator, pantry or garden that needs using? What do you have in the freezer that should be used up! What time constraints, meals away from home or guests for dinner are on your schedule this week? What dietary restrictions do you (or anyone you’re planning for) have this week? What do you feel like eating or cooking this week? Are there any special foods you’d like to eat, have been craving? Any recipes you’ve wanted to try?

Then fill in any days when you will be eating elsewhere, working late and have limited time for cooking, have a guest with a special diet, etc. Assuming you already have seven dinners and lunches planned, fill in any days you can use something from those meals to add to breakfast (Fish cakes with eggs, ham or steak with eggs, leftover fried rice, millet patties, potatoes and greens, or any leftover you like to eat for breakfast that you have already in the refrigerator from a former meal)

Breakfast plans

Of course, if you want, you could start your planning with breakfast, since that’s the first thing you cook in the day. Might give you a different perspective.

Think about what you usually eat for breakfast. Maybe you have oatmeal every day but Sunday when you have pancakes or waffles. Okay, not much to plan there.

But, if that sounds too boring, why not alternate days of your usual breakfast with something different that could provide a different set of nutrients. Also variation is more satisfying to your curious taste buds.

There are all kinds of possibilities:

Protein bowls with a formula like greens, beans, rice, poached egg, hot sauce

Toast with almond butter, or avocado and an egg, or tomato and smoked salmon

Fish with a potato or millet cake.

Pancakes, or waffles or French Toast, plain or with all sorts of additions

Saute of vegetables- sweet potato, onion, garlic, broccoli, mushrooms with or without eggs scrambled into it.

Then of course there are eggs: scrambled, soft boiled, jammy, hard boiled, fried, poached and omelets with all manner of additions. From plain cheese to multiple cheeses, vegetables and meat additions. With fried potatoes and peppers and onions. With creamed chipped beef.

If I have a few Chinese dumplings left from a meal I like to save them to serve with fried rice and pocket eggs. These are fried eggs, whites folded over to seal like a dumpling, with a vinegar and soy sauce mixture tossed over them at the end.

I also like to have tiny fish cakes with eggs, or potato cakes left from mashed potatoes. Sausages of course, and ham and bacon, occasionally, but still make appearances.

Many things in our house become “that would be good with an egg for breakfast”.

And sometimes, I long for my childhood favorite for breakfast-leftover spaghetti.

So really, breakfasts needn’t be dull at all.

I haven’t even scratched the surface of possibilities. I have neglected most of the stuff that requires using flour because I’m personally avoiding those things but sometimes they make the list for me and you can certainly plan on them also.

Cream biscuits, lemon ginger scones, blueberry muffins, corn pancakes in summer, banana fritters with applesauce, rice pudding with cream. Coffee cake, bread pudding, apple crisp with ice cream. I could go on and on.

So, lets go to the Meal Planner Form I am using this week.

I planned my dinners and lunches already so that helped fill in this morning’s meal- a meatloaf sandwich.

Sunday we planned to have company for breakfast, and to serve “Clam Fritters” which is a favorite of our company and us and we just happened to have some clams. We also offered ham and eggs with them. And a bowl of clementines.

Monday- Using up ham from Sunday, Don had a egg, ham and cheese sandwich, I had a fried egg and piece of ham

Tuesday- I planned a protein bowl for this meal but instead we split a meatloaf and catsup sandwich. Ate some meatloaf I had defrosted from the freezer hot with gravy and potatoes for dinner last night. Thought about a meatloaf and catsup sandwich all night.

Wednesday- skipping breakfast, ate late and too much after election shenanigans

Thursday- a protein bowl: raw spinach, lentil and onion patties, yogurt, optional poached egg, and hot sauce

Friday- “That would be good with an egg”: Leftover piece of salmon, a fried egg, toast. (too lazy to make hollandaise but that would have gone nicely with this)

Saturday-Scrambled eggs with the rest of the ham and some scallions.

Meal planner stories

My system for planning meals

Planning Dinners

Planning Lunches

A fancy breakfast for our anniversary prepared by friends

Photos courtesy of the author

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Jean Anne Feldeisen is a writer, cook. and cookbook reader. She writes about cooking, food, books and aging well. Jean has been reading and writing poetry since age 5. The memoir Dear Milly is her first book. She is seventy plus years old and just getting started.