I love Breakfast. It’s not just the most important meal of the day it’s the most exciting. After all, no other meal has the potential to turn into a flaming cartwheel of pajama bottoms, bad coffee and a hastily grabbed ‘Breakfast Sandwich’. One usually made by people who read about Breakfast as a concept once and shouldn’t be allowed near anything resembling a sandwich without supervision.
Remember kids, Bacon should not be something you could whittle into a rudimentary umbrella.
No one wants that.
Not the pig.
Not Big Umbrella.
Not you.
Especially not you.
So! With that in mind I am proudly continuing my years long deep dive into Things For Breakfast That Are Good. And thanks to the welcome addition of Peel to the Milton Keynes Train Station’s humourless Gerry Anderson-esque façade it’s one where you can get some amazing porridge.
This is the second year I’ve lived here. Amazingly I have yet to hear a continuity announcement be prefaced by the phrase ‘ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN IN THE NEXT HALF HOUR!’ especially as it usually bloody does.
Anyway, despite looking like a Harold Pinter play in building form, MK Central is home to some seriously good food spots. There’s a couple of chains, Costa and
but even they have staff who give a shit and food and coffee that’s never less than edible and always well in the ‘Good’ to ‘YOU ARE MY PROTEIN AND CAFFEINE GOD, LET ME SERVE YOU’ range.
Then there’s Jas Masala Bite, which is an excellent Indian takeout and Peel. I’ve blogged about them before but just before Christmas we went there for breakfast. Protein Porridge specifically. Here are the ingredients;
Banana, vanilla flavored protein powder, porridge, a little honey.
I didn’t lick the bowl. I just thought about it. Lots.
Porridge, or oatmeal, is brilliant. It fulfills your desperate need for sugar in the morning but does so in a way that’s based on slow release of energy rather than filling your system so full of stimulants you can see math(s). It’s also way, way more versatile than I ever thought and you can put almost anything you want on it. I mean, I’d maybe draw the line at sausage oatmeal and would definitely have some serious questions for you if you stuck a grilled cheese sandwich in there, but most stuff you can absolutely throw in there.
Which brings me to this, my first and so far greatest culinary invention of 2016! Victor! The bowl of delight!
That’s steelcut oats, some dried coconut, some almonds and some chocolate chips. About 20 grams worth which kicks out to around 80 calories. The entire bowl in fact, according to MyFitnessPal looks like this:
Oatmeal-160 calories
Chocolate Chips-100 calories
Desiccated coconut-63 calories
Flaked Almonds-157 calories
That kicks out at around 480 calories. Except I had few more chocolate chips while I waiting for the oatmeal to cook so it was actually around 680.
A couple of quick notes here:
– I’m going to be talking about calories more in Al Dente this year. Not because I hate you, freedom, the American Way or odd numbered Star Trek movies but because I’m changing my dietary focus. I’ve lost a lot of weight in the last two years, but put a non-zero amount back on too. The secret to stopping that back slide is both to do more exercise and be more granular about how I make and look at food. Hence, calorie counts.
-Average breakfast for me is 750 calories. So this, even with the Chocolate of Indulgence, isn’t going to mean I’m eating rice cakes for the rest of the day.
So what did it taste like? A Bounty. Or, if you’re American, an Almond Joy. The chocolate melts almost immediately and wraps everything else together in a bowl of delicious carby goo that isn’t overpowering sweet at all. Even better, the coconut draws a chunk of the liquid out but doesn’t dry the bowl. Instead everything gets a nice, uniform, chewy texture.And most importantly, I wasn’t hungry for about three hours after this.
Breakfast. It can, and should, be fun. You can, and should, make sure you treat yourself in places where it won’t hurt your calorie count for the day. And I can, and will, be making this again. Next time, Pig Soup!