A good time to start the year right nutritionally

With January Lows, its a fine time for a hot cereal breakfast

I've always enjoyed breakfast cereal from the days a of Sugar Crisp and Captain Crunch, but now that I am more enlightened I prefer simpler,whole food goodness which I choose to get through hot oatmeal,  I have found nothing that "sticks with me" better whan those whole oats in the morning. Eaten at 5 am, I am never hungry before noon.  That was a suprise to me, for as an old bacon, eggs, and toast "ranch kid" my parents endoctrinated me that "bacon and eggs" was required if you were going to shred pastures or build fence. But they didn't stay with me.  Nothing ever did until I read The China Study in 2006 and moved in to whole food macrobiotic eating.

I always thought that cooking hot cereal in the morning would take too long.  It doesn;t.  Old fashioned Quaker rolled oasts takes avout 5 minutes for me to fix a nonstick pot of them using 1/2 cup of oats to 1 cup boiling water.  That yields a weight-loss size portion both for me and my wife.  Thin folks could double that if desired.  We top ours with a medley of fresh strawberries and blueberries, of which the cost is variable.  Frozen berry mixes--we like Wal-Mart's "berry medley" as a substitute for fresh.

Quick cooking oats don't taste as good to me and are only about 2 minutes faster to prepare.  Steel cut oats, currently popular in food magazines, take much longer (30 min) to prepare and have a soft gruel-like texture that I enjoy but am too impatient to wait for.

If you use a nonstick pot (I use a 1 quart lidded Calfalon from Belk, $26) and it cleans pretty easily fresh from the stove,  Don't use steel utensils.  Plain stainless pots probably should soak a bit.

Most of our local stores have a good supply of fresh or frozen breakfast fruits which you can mis and match depending on the seasonality and cost--the summer fruits are a bit high right now!

More words on healthy breakfasts later this week.  Give old Jersy and Porky and your henny-pennies a rest for a while.

Enjoy....and send your comments please.