I am a big believer in making food from scratch, especially treats, as a way to know what’s in your food, reconnect to the process of cooking, food, and family, and save money.

When you buy packaged foods, you pay less for cheap ingredients and fillers and more for packaging.

To make a basic pancake recipe, all you need is flour, milk, eggs, sugar, oil or butter, baking powder, and salt.

Chances are, you already have most of those ingredients on hand.

If you buy a box brand of readymade dry pancake mix, it will most likely contain up to 20 ingredients.

Does that make sense?

You could argue that buying pancake mix will save you from having to buy all of the dry ingredients, but those dry ingredients lend themselves to other recipes, so in the long run, you save money when you make things from scratch.

Dry pancake and waffle mix is relatively simple to put together and will last about a month,  And if you have leftovers, they can be frozen (lined between wax paper), and popped into the toaster (so make toaster-friendly sizes) when you’re ready to eat them.

About once a month to every two months I’ll get a craving for pancakes and it doesn’t take me more than 15 minutes from start to finish to pull it all together. Sometimes I’ll throw in a ripe banana, frozen blueberries, or chocolate chips for variety.

Check out these recipes for dry pancake and waffle mix:

Buttermilk Pancake & Waffle Mix from Country Living

Gluten-Free Pancake Mix from Dummies.com

Dairy-Free Pancake Mix from DairyFree.About.com

Dairy-Free, Egg-Free Pancake Mix from (never home)maker.com

Be sure to use an airtight container and label your mix with the date and a quick recipe.

Rhubarb is very popular where I live in NYC and makes its annual appearance at the farmers markets in late spring. Technically, it’s a vegetable (with toxic leaves!), but it’s regarded as a fruit. Because of its extreme tartness, it is almost always mixed in with fruit like strawberries and apples.

It took me a long time to come around to rhubarb – I just couldn’t be impressed or inspired, but occasionally, I’ll take some and try to do something different with it beyond the standard crumbles, pies, and jams that everyone defaults to.

This recipe, adapted from The Ultimate Smoothie Book, is a nice departure.

This recipe requires advanced preparation.

Ingredients

½ cup stewed rhubarb and raisins (recipe to follow)
¼ cup rolled oats
2 tbs flaxseed
1 cup plain milk of your choice
½ t ground cloves
1/8 tsp sweetener of your choice or to taste
6 ice cubes, optional

Stewed Rhubarb and Raisins

3 cups tender rhurbarb, diced into ½ inch pieces
1 cup raisins
½ cup apple cider or orange juice
2 tbs honey or maple syrup
1 tsp grated orange peel

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir occasionally and gently until it comes to a boil. Lower heat and simmer until the rhubarb breaks down and the raisins are tender, about 30 minutes. Taste for sweetness and add more, if desired.

Let cool.

Pour the ½ cup of rhubarb and raisin mixture into a bowl or container with a lid, add the oats and flaxseed and cover with milk. Place the bowl in the refrigerator overnight.

When you’re ready to prepare it, add the mixture to your blender with the remaining ingredients and blend on high speed until completely blended.

You can add the remaining rhubarb and raisin mixture to yesterday’s congee recipe or to any cooked cereal of your choice. If you’re adding it to the congee, you may want to adjust the liquid.

One of my favorite breakfast beverages is my “Morning Milk” recipe. You could have this at anytime of the day, but I like to drink it first thing because of its better-than-caffeine-pick-you-up qualities.

There are herbs with warming and metabolism-stimulating qualities as well as the banana for potassium and B6, and depending on the type of milk you use, there are additional nutrition benefits to making a fresh batch every day. Click here for the recipe.

Congee is the name given to the traditional rice porridge of many Asian countries and is eaten for breakfast, dinner, or as a side dish, depending on the foodways of the culture. It is usually prepared overnight in a slow cooker/crock pot or rice cooker, and that’s what this recipe calls for.

For this breakfast congee, you are welcome to use any grain that you have on hand and you should experiment with different grains to enjoy a wide variety of tastes, textures, and nutritional benefits.

For 1 serving:

Use 1 part grain, ¼ cup to 5 parts liquid, 1 ¼ cups, combined in your slow cooker and cook on the lowest setting for 8 hours.

You may want to play around with the ratio of liquid to grain to reach your desired consistency. You should aim for a very creamy consistency and texture.

You can try it plain, or you can add in a number of ingredients for a sweet or savory experience, like the ones suggested below.

Liquids:

Water is typically used in congee, but you can also use any milk of your choice (dairy, rice, almond, etc)

Grains to try:

Short or long grain rice (white or brown), quinoa, barley, millet, oat groats, amaranth, wheat berries, rye, spelt

You can try them separately or combine two or three.

Fruits:

Add any dried fruits you enjoy to the pot or top with fresh fruit of your choice as you sit down to eat it

Vegetables (to add to the pot overnight):

Leafy greens, squash, sweet potato, carrots

Spices to add:

Cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, vanilla, allspice, bay leaf (remove bay leaf before eating), gomasio (sesame salt)

Sweeteners:

Maple syrup, honey, molasses, barley malt syrup

I never ate oatmeal growing up. I tried it once, along with cream of wheat, and could never wrap my taste buds around the texture, or the my eyes, for that matter. It just never looked all that appealing to me. And since my mother wasn’t a hot cereal person herself, I wasn’t forced to eat it.

It wasn’t until very recently, about three years ago, that a friend mentioned that she’d mixed some leftover greens into a fresh batch of steel-cut oats and that piqued my interested. Almost everyone I knew that ate oatmeal ate it sweet, and the idea that it could be anything but sweet never occurred to me. But it is a grain, after all, and just like you can have sweet rice dishes and rice pudding, you can have savory oatmeal.

So I decided to give it a try, and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Savory oatmeal with leafy greens is on my list of official comfort foods. It’s a great way to use up leftover greens and enjoy a simple meal that will keep you satisfied for a good part of the morning.

Ingredients

½ cup steel-cut oats, soaked overnight in water or vegetable stock
1 cup leftover leafy greens
Your favorite seasonings, to taste, optional
Salt and pepper, to taste

Steel-cut oats can take up to an hour to cook completely, so if you soak them overnight you can cut down the cooking time to about 20 minutes. If I don’t have vegetable stock on hand, I’ll sometimes throw a small amount of vegetable bouillon into the water while it’s cooking for extra flavor.

Prepare the steel cut oats according to package directions. In the last ten minutes of cooking, fold in your leftover greens and let simmer until the greens are heated through and the oats are cooked thoroughly. Add seasonings if using, and a little extra water or stock, if necessary.

People skip breakfast either because of poor time management or a misguided attempt at weight loss, but what you eat (or don’t) at the top of the morning will determine how you’ll function throughout the day.

The word itself is an indication of what you need to be doing – breaking the fast – (abstaining from eating) of the past several hours you spent asleep plus the couple of hours after your last meal before bedtime (hopefully, you put space between your last meal and bedtime).

When you skip breakfast, several things begin to happen. First, your body will begin to slow down your metabolism and hold on to the energy (calories) it should be using for everyday functions, like keeping you awake and breathing, walking and talking, and cognitive tasks. Next, you’ll be tempted to make poor food choices by the time you do finally get around to eating. You’ll be so hungry that you’ll just reach for the nearest and most convenient option to sate your hunger. You also risk overeating by eating more than you usually would if you’d had breakfast, because of that overwhelming hunger and as a way to compensate for missing that first meal.

But not all breakfasts are created equal, so even though any breakfast is better than no breakfast at all, think about how you relate to breakfast and what kinds of foods make you feel good and alive in the morning.

Which foods generally have you feeling your best and hold you over til midday? Is it enough for you to have a bowl of cereal or a bagel, or do you need to have some kind of protein and veggies? Will a fruit smoothie satisfy you or would you prefer to start your day with a bowl of oatmeal? How about soup? Do you ever eat dinner leftovers for breakfast?

Maybe you’re a “two breakfast” kind of person who needs to start off with something light before heading off to work or school and having something more substantial when you’re at your destination.

There are food experts (and food fanatics) that can write for days about which foods are best for the first meal of the day, but it’s really up to you to experiment and see what kinds of foods in which combinations will get you through to lunchtime without cravings, snacking, and or food-related mood swings.

Just be mindful to watch the amount of sugar and/or caffeine you consume first thing, as the initial energy spike could have you crashing by lunchtime.

What do you eat for breakfast and how has that been working for you?