Breakfast Tea for Balancing Blood Sugar

Recipe courtesy of Rossana from our No Sugar Cooking Lesson and Breakfast in Honor of Diabetic Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor. This infusion is made from blueberry leaves and cinnamon. Add a touch of blueberries, and you have blood-sugar-balancing beverage that will send you to tastebud heaven.

Recipe for 1 quart of infusion
1/3 cup fresh blueberry leaves
1 cinnamon stick

Add ingredients to a quart-size glass jar. (Reused pasta sauce or pickle
jars work beautifully. Make sure they don't smell like it though.) Add
boiling water to the very top, and cover. The leaves and the cinnamon
bark will soak up that water as it's fibers open, so you'll need to "top
off" the jar with water in about 15 minutes. Wait until the mixture
cools - overnight is best - so that the cinnamon and blueberry leaves
impart their full medicinal value to the water. Reheat (but don't boil!
it changes the flavor) or enjoy with chilled blueberries. Yummy
sugar-balancing goodness! It's the best tasting medicine you'll ever drink.

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No Sugar Breakfast in Honor of Diabetic Sonya Sotomayor

In honor of our new diabetic Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor, we gave a cooking lesson on how to create breakfasts that are low in sugar, but high in deliciousness. This is recipe 1 of 3 that was devoured (with lots of moaning) on Sunday morning.

Green Sausage Wraps

Wraps: Romaine lettuce or any broad dark green leaves

The filling:
1 or natural sausages
1 sweet red pepper
1/2 sweet green pepper
2 tomatoes
1 zucchini
1/2 red onion
1/2 cup parsley
olive oil
1 or 2 cloves of garlic (to taste)

Sauce:
1 tsp lavender
2-3 tablespoons mustard
1/2 cup olive or sesame oil
1 pinch ground cardamom
1 lemon

Cut peppers, onion, tomatoes and zucchini thinly and add to a skillet. Add water, and cook on high heat. Pour 1 tablespoon of olive oil on top, garlic and sausage on top of the veggies to the skillet. Stir occasionally until the mixture is the consistency that you like. Should be about 5-10 minutes.

Let the mixture cool a little bit and stuff the romaine leaves with it. Add parsley on top. Eat. Enjoy. Prosper.

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Patty Pan Squash and Artichoke Saute for Breakfast

If you are lucky to discover patty-pan squash in your local farmer's market, supermarket or your own garden, scream "Eureka" A much flavorful and delicate flavor that the other summer squashes, it tastes amazing with artichokes, spinach, tomatoes, eggplants or any other vegetable you want to combine it with.

Ingredients:
1 patty pan squash
frozen artichoke hearts
eggplant or vegetable paste
avocado

Sautee patty pan squash with artichoke hearts until tender in water. Add a tiny amount of olive oil on top when nearly done. Fold cooked vegetables into the eggplant paste, and add chunks of avocado to give the dish more substance. Enjoy.

or you can eat this with your favorite protein - beans, sardines or breakfast sausages.

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Cherry Kisel for Breakfast - Even Presidents Love it.

Obama and Putin sitting down to breakfast in Moscow:

"The two leaders, however, appeared to hit it off over a breakfast of eggs, smoked beluga, black caviar, olady [pancakes] with cranberry jam, quail-stuffed pelmeni [dumplings], tea brewed in a samovar, cherry kisel and homemade ice cream for dessert. The meal, which was scheduled to last 90 minutes, stretched on for more than two hours." via The Moscow Times

Epic breakfast. You will have to use your imagination to recreate the quail-stuffed pelmeni and get an actual samovar for the tea, but here's a recipe for Cherry Kisel, since cherries are now in season here!

The traditional recipe uses sugar and potato starch. This recipe uses honey and kuzu root, but I imagine one can use a low-glycemic sweetener, like stevia as well.

2-3 cups cherries or other berries
6 cups of water
4 tbsp kuzu
1 tbsp raw honey

Boil cherries in water until water turns red and the cherry taste is unmistakable in the water. In a separate bowl, combine 1/2 cup of cold water with 4 tablespoons kuzu root. When it becomes a mixture, combine with the juice. Heat for 3 minutes and then turn off heat. Cool, strain and refrigerate for a cold drink.

For a different texture, you can try mashing berries inside, creating a cherry smoothie.

Kuzu drinks soothe the stomach and other inflamed membranes and are known as remedies for digestive upset. If your body is hot, and inflamed in the summer, this might be a great cooling drink. When taken regularly, kuzu drinks strengthen a weak digestive system and reduce symptoms such as frequent indigestion and intestinal gas.

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Green Eggs, No Ham.

Say!
I like green eggs and ham!
I do! I like them, Sam-I-am!
And I would eat them in a boat.
And I would eat them with a goat...

And I will eat them in the rain.
And in the dark. And on a train.
And in a car. And in a tree.
They are so good, so good, you see!
-Dr.Seuss

Sadly I have no pig or ham,
no bacon or tofurky spam

But i do love green eggs, (no ham)
I do! I like them, Sam-I-am!

Ingredients
swiss chard
salt or dulse
eggs

Pulverize chard through a food processor until it is finely chopped, or chop it fine, until the pieces are smaller than the size of a 1/4 of a penny.

Crack open the eggs in a bowl, add the greens, and use a fork to incorporate them into the eggs, until it's a fine green mess. Add dulse.

Pour into a hot pan, cover and cook on low to medium heat.

Garnish with salsa if you like.

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Breakfast Makeover: Celebrating Passover with Amazing Breakfasts (Part 2 of 3)

It's day 5 or day 6 of Passover. Alas, even you lost count on this early rainy morning. You've stumbled into the kitchen in a morning daze looking for anything healthy and quick to grab -- and all you find are matzo crumbs and some wilted dill. The situation is dire. Thoughts of bagels and lox dance in your head as your rummage in the fridge.

No worries. Breakfast Lab is here to help. Grab a tomato, that wilted dill, a can of sardines or another kosher fish, and prepare to create a masterpiece. It's not exactly bagels or lox, but it's still very very good.


Stuffed tomato
Satisfying tomato wholesomeness holding a good protein source to give you energy and brain fuel for the entire morning. Great thing about stuffing things is that you can create your own unique stuffing and each time it will taste a little different.

What you need:
5 minutes
a spoon, a fork and a knife
1-2 tomatoes
1/2 cup chopped dill
1 can sardines or another fish
a few leaves of basil

Chop dill and basil. Mash fish into the chopped greens.

Cut the top off the tomato and cut out the insides. Stuff the fish mixture inside. Bite in and savor the deliciousness.

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Black (Forbidden) Rice Cereal

Forbidden rice is a whole grain with a dark rich purple color, almost black. It has a slightly sweet chewy texture, good for puddings, desserts, and breakfast concoctions.

Black rice is rich in iron. If you have symptoms like pale skin, fatigue, irritability, dizziness, weakness, shortness of breath, sore tongue, brittle nails, decreased appetite and frontal headaches you might have an iron deficiency, in which case, this breakfast is a good way to begin your day.

Recipe
1 cup cooked black rice
1 cup of rice milk
1 teaspoon of agave syrup or dark molasses
cinnamon if you are not allergic to it

Combine all the ingredients together. Chow down.

How to cook rice:
1) Rinse rice until the water runs clear.
2) cover with water and soak the rice overnight
3) rinse the soaked rice again
4) place in a pan and cover with water -- about 2:1 ratio of water to rice
5) Boil, cover and reduce heat to the lowest setting possible.
6) cook for about 30 minutes.
7) try the rice -- if it's chewy and soft, it's ready

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Mangú - Traditional Dominican breakfast

From Rossana Inez Rossi
This recipe feeds 2-3 people

This is what I like to call A Dominican Farmer’s Breakfast. I LOVED IT when my parents made me mangú with eggs on school mornings because I knew that was the day I wouldn’t be hungry at all before lunch.

And not only that -- Plantains are rich in Potassium, Vitamin C and contain compounds that are beneficial for people with ulcers - British Journal of Pharmacology: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1987262

You will need:
A pot
Sharp knife
Butter knife
Potato masher
Bowl
3 Green (unripe) plantains
1 Onion
Cooking oil
Olive oil
Vinegar (the kind you like best)
½ pot of water
Salt

1. Put half a pot of water to boil. Add a teaspoon or two of salt, or to your taste. (Don’t know your taste? Taste the water a minute after you’ve added the salt.)


2. Prepare the plantains by cutting off the ends, then cutting them in half. Cut these halves in half lengthwise. Use the butter knife to peel the skin off.


3. When all the plantains are peeled, put them in the hot/boiling water. Cook them at a low boil (med-high heat) until a knife or fork breaks them easily - about 10-15 minutes.




4. While the plantains are boiling: slice the onion. Put the rounds in a bowl, and cover them with vinegar - about ¼ cup. Now, in a frying pan, heat up the oil. When it’s hot, add the onions and vinegar. Cover the pan to prevent the popping sparks from flying out. Check on them! Saute the onions, stirring every so often, cooking them over medium flame until they are soft or turn light brown. Turn off the heat.
   


5. When the plantains are done, pour about ¾ of the water into a bowl. Mash them up until they are soft –you’ll need to add some of the plantain-water as you’re mashing to make them nice and soft – like mashed potatoes, but stiffer.
   


6. Serve the plantains and drizzle the sautéed onions on top.


7. Yummy!

Dominicans traditionally eat this with:

• Scrambled eggs


• Sliced sausages: Cook them first (do not add oil, they have enough fat on their own), and cook the onions with them

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Winter Red Quinoa with Wild Berry Tea

Chewy and warm with fragrant notes of sweet and sour dried wild berries, this breakfast is nourishing and highly satisfying on a cold winter day.

When you need strength and warmth, the best thing for breakfast is a hearty warm grain. The Scots have their oat groats, which have been known to warm the soul on a foggy cold morning and we all know how good they are for us. (That is, of course, if you don't have an oat allergy.)

And then there's quinoa! Ancient people gathered quinoa in the high altitude plains of Peru's Andes, Bolivia and Equador and thrived in those harsh living conditions. And no wonder - quinoa is a complete protein that rivals other grains in nutrition.

What you will need:
a pot and stove
1 cup of organic red quinoa
2 cups water
1 tablespoon or 2 teabags of wild berry tea or hibiscus tea.*
1 teaspoon of dried mint

Soak quinoa overnight and rinse in the morning. Place in a pot with water, mint and tea on the stove on medium-high heat until boiling. It will look like this:



Reduce heat to low and cover. Set timer for 15 minutes and do whatever else you like. Come back in 15 minutes and take off heat -- drain water and serve.

You can also enjoy it with milk or milk substitute.

* If you are lucky enough to find a cheap wild berry tea in an international / specialty market, all the better. I usually buy a Polish wild berry tea in a Russian store here in NYC. If you are lucky enough to have tea or markets like that nearby, good! If not, any dried wild herbal tea or even hibiscus tea would do.

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Purple Kale Wraps: Raw Food is Delicious

I dreamt of this Spring-inspired breakfast on an unusually warm February morning. I miss springtime -- and salty seaweed, fresh sour-sweet tomatoes, smooth avocado and crunchy sprouts inside a kale leaf smell like spring, taste like spring and if I close my eyes I can pretend it is spring.

What you will need:
5 purple kale leaves
1 tomato
1 avocado
dulse and sprouts to taste

Wrap all the ingredients inside a kale leaf. You're done. Quick and easy.

If you are not used to a lot of raw food, especially in the morning, add a healthy salad dressing to the inside of the wrap. I myself love garlicky dressings on these, but not everyone is brave enough to eat garlic in the morning.

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Garbanzo Wonder Salad

My favorite breakfast. It is. This salad has a lot of complex carbohydrates and protein, so instead of falling prey to the mid-morning "feed me!" stomach grumble, I last until lunch.

It's also chock full of amazing nutritious properties -- take dill, for example. Did you know that it contains oils that help neutralize benzopyrenes that are part of cigarette smoke? If you're living in the city, this breakfast will help protect your body from free radical damage.

Chickpea Salad Recipe
2 cups cooked chickpeas (also known as garbanzo bean)
1/2 onion
1 cup red cabbage
1-1/2 cup fresh dill or parsley herbs
sesame seed oil or olive oil to taste

Combine chickpeas with diced onion, cabbage and herbs. Sprinkle oil. Eat. Enjoy. Delicious, right?

makes 4 servings
total cost: $2

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Warm Healing Breakfast: Pumpkin Soup

Cold winter days bring wind and snow and sneezing. Lots of it. But I'm not worried -- I have this soup to soothe me on the days I have a sore throat, warm me on the days the icy winds blow and heal me with its immune-boosting Vitamin A, C, beta-carotine and potassium.


Simple Pumpkin Soup Recipe
1/4 of a pumpkin
1 onion
enough water to cover the chopped pumpkin (around 1.5 quarts)
cinnamon, sea salt, pepper to taste

Sautee onions in pan. Peel and cut pumpkin, and throw into a pot with water on high heat. Boil. Add browned onions to the pot with pumpkins and reduce heat to medium. Let it percolate on the stove for 45 minutes or until the pumpkin is falling apart.

Puree the ingredients, add cinnamon or other spices and slurp the sweet deliciousness.

This is a simple recipe of course. You can spice it up, add more vegetables for a more complex flavor or substitute pumpkin with other winter squashes for variety.

Pot of organic pumpkin soup was around $6 and lasted 3 days.

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Michael Phelps -- Won't you share your eggs with me?

Doesn't this egg look like a mushroom? Tasty eggy mushroom.

I dreamt that I was eating breakfast with Michael Phelps.

He was dripping wet. He offered me pancakes with powdered sugar. Spaghetti. Soggy chips. Mashed potatoes with margarine, little slices of trans fats. I kept telling him about the amazing powers of whole foods. And there he was, keeping the eggs to himself. How fair is that? Giving away all the bad stuff and keeping the good for himself.

So, as soon as I woke up, I ran into the lab, hankering for an egg sandwich.

Ingredients
1-2 slices of whole grain bread
1 - 1/2 organic boiled egg
Lettuce (I used curly endive)
Vegenaise
Black Pepper
Laver seaweed

Toast laver on medium heat in a dry pan until it's crunchy. Combine ingredients on top of the slices of bread.

Very tasty. The salty and crunchy laver are a nice balance to the mushy egg and fresh greens.

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Raw Blissful Breakfast: Fruit with Chocolate Pudding

Sugar from the fruit and the fat from the poppy seeds, avocado and chocolate combine to provide steady energy throughout the day.

1/2 avocado
1-2 tbsp of raw chocolate powder
1/2 tsp of honey to sweeten if wanted, but really, the fruit is so sweet, it balances out
Fruit
poppy seeds or ground flax seeds

Chocolate pudding: combine avocado with chocolate. Add honey.

Dip fruit into pudding, and dip into poppy seeds. Salivate. Munch. Enjoy.

Chocolate pudding came out grainy on the first try, but it was still very good.

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Asparagus with Burdock Root

Burdock root is known as a blood purifier and garlic, Nama Shoyu and asparagus support the immune system. Asparagus also has a diuretic effect, which is good for treating water retention. But more importantly -- it tastes absolutely amazing!

Recipe
1 cup Asparagus Stalks 40 cal more nutrition data
1/2 cup of Burdock Root 55 cal more nutrition data
2 tsp of Nama Shoyu
1 clove of garlic

Scrub burdock to get the skin off. Cut it into matchsticks. Throw burdock, asparagus (with spices or finely chopped garlic, if you wish) in a pan to lightly sautée or pan-boil in minimum amount of water on high heat. When the asparagus turn bright green, turn off heat. Eat, enjoy and laugh at how easy this was.

Preparation: 5 minutes
Cooking: 4-5 minutes

You might want to eat this in combination with brown rice or some other whole grain, since it is very low in calories.

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Açai Fruit Smoothie

I do love a frozen treat for breakfast. And when that frozen treat tastes like chocolate and berries, packs a "superfood" punch and wakes you up, all the better.

Deep in the Amazon rain forest grows a berry that is assumed to be one of the most nutrient rich foods in the entire world - the Açaí (ah-sigh-ee). It is crammed with more anti-oxidants than blueberries or pomegranates, and has healthy omega-3 oils, protein and dietary fiber. Good for your skin, heart, body and brain. And now, through the wonder of modern food distribution, I found it in the freezer section of the NYC Union Square Whole Foods.

I would love to find an original recipe that Amazon tribes have eaten for centuries, but for now, I will have to console myself with a simple frozen slushy experiment:

Ingredients
frozen açai
organic peach
pineapple

Blend together in a blender or food processor. Salivate, serve, eat and enjoy. :)

My Other Frozen Concoctions
Watermelon Slushy
Mystère de Chocolat

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Days#12-17 If In Doubt, Go Hunt Somewhere New

These are days 12 through 17 of my Eating Green Experiment. You can read about why I began it here.

It's been a hectic week with dangerous and wild recipes. My favorite so far has been:
---
Ostrich Meat Stewed with Collard Greens
ostrich hamburger meat
a bunch of greens
spices to taste
garlic sauce

Throw meat into a pan. Stew it in some water and spices. Add greens. Cook until they become bright green and add sauce. (Roasted garlic sauce went well with this.)

That combination was so good! Mmmm.... and ostrich is a much healthier red meat than beef. Low in fat and high in protein.

2-3 servings
Time: 10 minutes
Cost/serving: $4.50

---
Conclusions

So, it's the end of March and my brave experiment. What have I learned?

1. There are way too many ways of cooking and eating greens to just make a month of it.

2. If you get bored, go hunt somewhere new. A new store, a farmers market, a flower garden or even a huge supermarket. That's where I found the ostrich.

3. If someone says, "So what will you eat for breakfast today?", and proceeds to chew meat and fried rice in sludgy brown sauce, don't sulk - instead bite your spinach and munch as loud as you can. Moan with pleasure so that he/she gets jealous of your leaf eating. Your body will thank you.

Image by Lollie-Pop used under the Creative Commons License.

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Days# 7-11 Earth Laughs in Flowers

These are days 7 through 11 of my Eating Green Experiment. You can read about why I began it here.

So there we were - my boyfriend and I, looking out onto the Delaware River-Turnpike Toll Bridge. We were 66 miles from home and his car just made a funny noise and died in the toll lane. The E-Z pass green light was demanding GO and the car was disobeying like a pigheaded metal gas-guzzling toddler.

We waited for the rescue tow truck, as the slight whiff of panic in the air (from me,) was slowly mixing with the music, the scenery, and the scent of gasoline. Adventure, adventure, adventure!

So what has this story to do with breakfast, anyway? Well, I was sort of hungry. And there we were, on the side of the road by the flower bed, battling customer service, insurance companies and parents via phone. Very exhausting. A thought appeared. Grew. Budded, if you will... What about eating... a flower breakfast?

Edible Flower Experiment

Thankfully, my revolt for car exhaust and general caution prevented me from trying the poisonous daffodils, but I present to you my new harmless breakfast:

Broccoli or Cauliflower Floret-Bouquet
Hey, it deliciously rhymes. Boil or steam for 5 minutes, dip in a healthy sauce and put on a stick. Many sticks in a glass - and you have a breakfast bouquet.

And then you can go crazy and add other edible flowers

As soon as I get my hands on some of these, there will be some flowery concoctions presented on this blog.

Photo by Gaetan Lee used under the Creative Commons License

PS. I stole the title of this post from Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Day#6 Collard Green Wrap

This is Day 6 of my Eating Green Experiment. You can read about why I began it here.

The Wrap. The epitome of portability. The melding of flavors, one rolling upon the other. Just the right size to grab with your hand and go. It's becoming my favorite food in the world, but the whole wheat wraps that I've seen in the supermarket have ingredients that I can't pronounce, and they make me extremely sleepy, so I've found a substitute! Big leaves!

Collard Green Wrap
1/2 avocado
red cabbage
baby leaf greens
1 cucumber
1 radish

Cut away the tough stem of the Collard green so that it can bend. Stuff with with your favorite veggies and it's good to go.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

And collard greens are a nutritional cancer bomb:
"A study of Chinese women in Singapore, a city in which air pollution levels are often high putting stress on the detoxification capacity of residents' lungs, found that in non-smokers, eating cruciferous vegetables lowered risk of lung cancer by 30%. In smokers, regular cruciferous vegetable consumption reduced lung cancer risk an amazing 69%!"

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Days 2 through 5. I'm Eating Green Experiment Continues.

These are days 2 through 5 of my Eating Green Experiment. You can read about why I began it here.

I went shopping finally. Only organic markets have customers who don't get weirded out from my happy tiny squeals of "Arugula! Oh dearest, I will EAT YOU UP!" Or maybe they do, but I did not notice.

Anyway... so how am I doing? Doing well, thank you. I've been trying everything including the quite unoriginal (but tasty) old standby:


Take a bunch of green veggies, cut/tear them, then steam/boil until they're bright green and eat. Add olive oil if you wish. Very good in the morning, for it's warm and less abrasive on the stomach. 5 minutes preparation, 3 minutes to cook. Yes! It really is that quick. The wormy looking white things are sprouts and brown rice which I added in a moment of inspiration.

Price: (estimated) $2.00

The Effects

Day#2 I did not sleep the whole night, tossing and turning. While detoxification symptoms on the internet include insomnia and I am not an insomniac, I figure my money worries were the real reason. Sigh.

Day#3 Worn out, but surprisingly focused and awake, I munched on a salad and ran off into the urban wild.

Day#4 Fully worn, I tried to keep awake long enough in the morning to make myself a sandwich out of some whole grain bread, avocado and greens. It worked. My brain worked, the job interview went very well and I was unusually happy the rest of the day, though can't say how much of that happiness was food related.

Day#5 I need to get some sleep so that I have strength to write further!

Till tomorrow...

Your Crazy Breakfast Madam.

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