Interlude: Gentle Breakfasts

I love pulling things together in my breakfast ideas compilations, but although I usually say what they might be served with, I typically don't show you the whole meal. Here, I'm showing you everything I ate together. You've probably seen most of this before in some form, so it's not like my ideas posts. Instead, this is just breakfast, like my other meal posts tend to be, but you'll get five of them rather than just one.

Maybe these breakfasts should be part of the random meals series, but they have more care in them than randomness. Sometimes, I need to be extra gentle with myself. Here are the meals from some recent mornings when I made a special investment in gentleness and care to support my well-being. Because convenience helps, a lot of toast appears, but toast isn't just toast--it's a way of conveying all sorts of goodies!

This was a staycation meal: Rice pudding with fruit and hemp seeds, an improvisational hazelnut hot cocoa (I'm working on it; you'll get a recipe when it's ready), and avocado toast with tomato and cucumber. It was pretty and colorful, and I felt good about eating it.

More staycation food: A broiled grapefruit, avocado and tomato with flaky salt and fresh ground black pepper, and a sweet potato biscuit with Tofurky ham. I had herbal tea with this but it didn't make it into the photo. This was a use-it-up meal of sorts--I had half an avocado and half a tomato already in the fridge needing to be used, plus I had a bit of sweet potato that also needed to be put into something, and I had some leftover Tofurky ham roast. But it still hits the high points, with different flavors, colors, textures, and nutrient profiles. I also had some herbal tea, not pictured here.

A Saturday morning special: A small fruit salad (banana, clementine segments, and pomegranate arils), a very milky café au lait made from mocha Teeccino and soy milk, and a couple of little blueberry zucchini pancakes. I found, while eating it, that I wanted something for a pancake topping (even though the pancakes don't really need it; the blueberries are plenty juicy), so I added some non-dairy yogurt. I felt good with this on a leisurely weekend morning.

These things didn't go together perfectly, but that's why I ate it in courses. The first course was spicy sweet potato hummus on toast with everything bagel seasoning. This was followed by the dessert course (I totally do this for breakfast sometimes; seize the day if you can!). I had made a winter-style ambrosia salad and a coconut soy milk Cafix latte to round out my meal; this was all really satisfying.

Here's a more cohesive sweet potato hummus toast breakfast: It starts with whole grain toast with sweet potato hummus, which is then topped with cooked onions, red bell pepper, mushrooms, and spinach. Alongside that I had Cafix au lait made with soy milk. This was such a comforting breakfast that I had it several mornings in a row!

How do you take care of yourself when things aren't going according to plan? For whatever reason, I like to focus on breakfast as a way of pausing and reminding myself that I still have some level of control over my life. Obviously, I don't have all that much control, but I do decide what I eat in the morning, and I can decide to get up early enough to make sure that what I eat in the morning sends me positive messages about being worthy of care. I am worth a good breakfast.