Since we no longer eat cereal for breakfast, sometimes it’s hard for me to come up with easy breakfast ideas.  I guess I should add that I’d like them to also be healthy ideas.  There are lots of easy options out there.  Whether or not they’re healthy is a whole other thing.

I’ve been alternating breakfast burritos, oatmeal (the recipe from Deceptively Delicious), and smoothies.  But now since the weather is colder, smoothies aren’t a very good choice since we’re all freezing after consuming them!

Some of the ideas for an alternative are muffins, pancakes, french toast, and I’d love some more, if you’ve got any!  None of those are really that quick.  Breakfast burritos and oatmeal take me about 10-15 minutes to prepare from start to finish.

I ran across this recipe which seems like a great idea for refrigerator muffins.  Have you ever tried them?  You can mix up the batter and leave it in the fridge for up to 6 weeks.  Whenever you want muffins, you just get out the batter and fill your muffin tin.  That’s a pretty quick option.  The only problem I have is that the recipe has 3 cups of sugar in it.  It does make a very large batch, since it’s for having a lot on hand whenever you want to use it.  But that just seems like a lot of sugar.  I’ve baked with honey before but it always seems to have a bit of a funny taste to me.

One night this week I decided to mix up my muffin batter before I went to bed, and stick it in the fridge.  In the morning I made my muffins very quickly since all I had left to do was preheat the oven and pour the batter into the muffin tin.  

I’m open for options.  Since my husband eats breakfast with us too, he’s not really up for an english muffin with peanut butter on it.  Not very filling for him, I guess.  I bought some today, but I’ll do a sort of egg McMuffin thing with them.  That’s easy, but a little expensive in my opinion, since it uses almost the whole package of english muffins.  

Got any ideas for me?

Beet recipe?  Okay, it’s not exactly on everyone’s most-wanted-recipe list, but I stumbled upon an amazing way to eat this purple produce.  First, why beets?  Well, we recently joined a fresh organic produce co-op and we get a large crate full of various organic fruits and veggies every other week.  It’s a surprise what’s inside each time we get it and we often find ourselves with veggies we would not normally buy.  I’ve been looking at it as a sort of challenge.  It helps us try new things and new recipes!  I’ve not been a big beet fan in the past, but I did a little research and found that they are incredibly healthy.

Just look at all the health benefits of beets!

• lowers blood pressure
• effective in lowering LDL and total serum cholesterol, and triglyceride levels
• raises antioxidant enzyme levels in the liver and may promote detoxification in the intestines, blood, and liver
• may increase CD8 cells, which detect and remove abnormal cells in your colon
• help prevent stomach and colon cancer
• very high in folate = great for preventing birth defects during pregnancy
• high in magnesium = preventing osteoporosis
• lowers the level of free radical in your body, which are responsible for cell damage

There is something else about beets that can make them appealing…they’re sweet!  I remembered that I frequently see them as an ingredient in some of the freshly made juices at a grocery store we like.  So, I decided to throw some beets into our morning smoothie.  Here is what I did…

“We Got the Beet” Smoothie
1 1/2 cups apple juice
1/2 cup milk
1 pkg. frozen strawberries
1 banana
1/4 cup flax seed meal
1 beet, cut into large chunks

Throw it all in the blender and give it a whirl!  Makes about 4 cups.

OK, so if you don’t believe that this could actually be drinkable, here is the proof!

Ok, so go for it!  Try this out and let me know what you think.  Or, I’d love to hear about your very own beet creation!!