Morning Repasts…

During this time of self-isolation and staying home for the most part, our daily routine is even more fixed than usual.  There is no going out for breakfast or taking an all-day drive because it’s a beautiful day, so our usual schedule involves getting up late (we are going to bed later and later), watching some news while drinking coffee and then having something for breakfast.

We are trying hard not to waste food while confined… The following are samples of our morning fare.

Laurie loves Cheerios.  She just adds a bit of Splenda with dried cranberries on top and adds milk.  I’m trying to finish off some leftover Rice Chex and Corn Chex remaining from our snack making efforts around the Super Bowl.  So I put my cranberries in the bottom of the bowl, add the Rice Chex, then the Corn Chex, sprinkle on the Splenda and then I add milk.  Laurie doesn’t understand why I put my cranberries on the bottom but hey, we’re all different!  I also use a lot more milk with my cereal than she does…

We use half and half milk anytime we have cereal or a recipe calls for milk.  Why?  While it’s a little less healthy, we don’t use much milk and half and half has a long shelf life, hence no waste due to spoilage.

Another example of not wasting food.  Our friends Norm and Linda gave us a gift pack of Wolferman’s English Muffins at Christmas.  We froze some of them and this was the last of the lot…toasted, buttered with jam…for one of my breakfasts.  Quick, easy and satisfying...

We both love oatmeal but it’s basically a ‘cold weather’ breakfast…and we define that as any morning here in East Tennessee when the temperature drops below 40 F.  It was right around 32 F. on this occasion so Laurie made up a big pot of oatmeal.  We prefer the 12 minute type of Quaker Oats, not the instant variety.  We like our oatmeal with lots of Amish butter, brown Splenda sugar and dried cranberries with half and half milk.  This was a great start to another day in self-isolation! 

On another happy morning, I ‘had to’ finish off my last slab of Laurie’s meatloaf.  I heated it in the frying pan, covered it with some leftover chili, and then I topped it with an egg.  A very satisfactory way to start my day!

Another morning…so what to eat?  Laurie decided that she’d make some ready to bake Pillsbury biscuits.  Serve, top with lots of Amish butter and then add either apricot or strawberry jam.  Happy days!

We also did smoothies one morning… We had a bag of frozen mixed berries in the refrigerator and we had a couple of ripe bananas too.  Combine, blend and drink!  Very refreshing, healthy and satisfying too… 

Yes indeed…Pillsbury at work again.  This time it was a batch of large cinnamon rolls.  Not the best and not the healthiest, but they did provide a change of pace.  

We've noted that the fact that we've been eating more carbs than usual hasn't really hurt us weight-wise.  It's probably because we're only eating twice a day and if the morning repast is heavy, we tend to eat a light evening meal.

One evening we’d had tacos for dinner.  That meant that I had leftover taco meat prepared and ready to go, along with taco sauce and an 8 inch flour tortilla.  So for breakfast one morning I scrambled an egg with the meat and some Mexican blend shredded cheese, then topped it with the taco sauce… Wrap and eat…done!

FYI…The morning meals shown above aren’t the norm, at least for my better half.  Laurie’s usual breakfast consists of yogurt mixed with granola along with a glass of mango juice.  My usual breakfast consists of anything I can find in the refrigerator that needs to be disposed of plus juice, in my case its a mix of orange juice and low calorie cranberry juice.

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave