Before I started using this muffin, I would become a raging hunger monster by 11AM, snapping at clients, making interns cry, etc. My breakfast just couldn’t last! No cereal, fruit, bars could keep me full until lunch (and allow me to wake up 17 minutes before I have to leave, and not be disgusting like bran muffins). Hence, I started developing these muffins, which riff on several recipes for “morning glory” muffins, mostly from epicurious.

I have altered the recipe until they maximize filling-ness, tastiness, protein and have a good mix of vitamins and fiber.  The shredded fruit and vegetables are key: instead of being full of sugar and air, these dense muffins are full of taste and fiber. In the morning, I grab two and sometime toast and spread peanut butter before running out the door. Most importantly, these muffins freeze beautifully, so you can make a double batch, freeze half, and have breakfast for weeks in advance!

MAKES 12 BIG MUFFINS

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp salt

1/3 cup sugar (I have significantly cut down on this because I don’t think the muffins need to be supersweet. You may change it back to the original 1 cup if you like. Also, sometimes I mix brown and granulated sugar for fun).

¼ cup honey

¼ lb carrots (you can use up to 1.5x this amount and it will be fine)

½ cup pecans/walnuts,  chopped

¼ cup pumpkin seeds/sunflower seeds

½ cup raisins

3 large eggs

1 cup plain yogurt (you can use vegetable oil if you’re trying to gain weight).

2 tsp vanilla

1 Granny Smith apple

Preheat oven to 350 degrees .

First, mix together flours, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, then whisk in sugar and honey in the BIG BOWL. Shred the carrots and apple in a food processor (see picture). You should have between 2 and 3 cups of shredded fruit.

Mix the carrots and apples into the flour until each shred is coated (see picture). Then mix in all the nuts, seeds, and raisins.

Next, in a separate bowl, mix together eggs, yogurt, vanilla. Pour this wet mix into the dry mix and stir them all together. Butter/oil/spray/put doilies into your muffin tin. Put the batter in each cup, just up to the rim of the tray (or pile it on if you like huge muffin-tops).  For a classy touch, put a full pecan on top of each muffin. Bake muffins about 18 minutes and test with knife to see if they are done. If not, keep baking until there are. Let cool a bit in tin before taking out.

(Welcome to Breakfast Briefs. If you’re like me, you find yourself rushing out the door hungry and undercaffeinated many a morning, the inevitable result of which is $6 spent on a bad egg sandwich and coffee fit only for war criminals. In these posts, I’m going to share my tips and tricks for getting to work fed without adding more than 5 or 10 minutes to your morning routine.)

It’s been a while since I did a Breakfast Briefs post, but that’s because it’s been a while since I’ve done anything interesting for breakfast. It’s been a lot of yogurt and bananas at my desk, and it’s been getting old.

I saw some version of these muffins on a blog I can’t remember and had been meaning to try them for a while, so I finally went out, bought a muffin tin and some of those little paper muffin cups, and put on my breakfast hat (a jaunty fedora).

Baked goods are great for breakfast as you can just grab and go, but if I eat something sweet like a regular muffin for breakfast, I usually find myself hungry an hour later. Not so with these babies, which are basically an egg sandwich in muffin form.

And they’ve got green stuff in them, so they’ve got to be healthy, right?

The recipe here is an adaptation of several I’ve seen out on the interwebs.  There’s a fair amount of wiggle room in ingredients, I’d imagine, but try to keep the egg-flour-baking soda-cottage cheese ratio roughly the same. If you are a meat lover, you could definitely add bacon. Other ideas include bell pepper, tomatoes, or fresh herbs. I used scallions because I had some around, but any onion will do.

These muffins do tend to stick to the paper quite a bit. If you’ve got some spray olive oil or the like, greasing them up is probably a good idea. Popping one in the microwave for 30 seconds before eating also makes it easier to peel and warm to boot, but they are certainly good cold as well.

Savory Eggy Muffiny Breakfast Things

1/2 pound mushrooms,cleaned and sliced
1 bunch spinach, rinsed, and chopped
1/4 cup scallions, rinsed and sliced
1 cup flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
5 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup cottage cheese
1/2 cup cheddar, grated

1. Saute scallions in a small amount of olive oil for 2-3 minutes.  Add mushrooms and cook for another 3-4 minutes.

2. Add spinach. The spinach needs a little water in the pan to steam. If you just washed it, the water on the leaves will be enough. If it’s had a chance to drain, add two tablespoons of water.

3. Meanwhile, combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Add eggs, cottage cheese, and cheddar. Stir to combine.

4. When the shrooms/spinach are cooked, let them cool, then add them to the mix. If there is a ton of water left in the pan, you may want to drain some off first.

5. Grease muffin cups if desired. Fill cups with batter until almost full. (This recipe makes about 8-12 muffins depending on size.)

6. Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes or until tops are nicely browned and/or a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Fact: 1780294 out of 1780294 American Gladiator contestants who ate this for breakfast kicked the patooties of contestants who ate Wheaties or Kurt Vonnegut’s 1973 novel for breakfast. You just can’t argue with those numbers.

For a long time, I always skewed to the “-unch” side of “brunch,” taking the non-breakfast savory route out whenever possible. In college, that usually meant settling for last night’s tofu parmigiana over danishes or “Eli’s Breakfast Sandwiches.” And I was one of roughly two people I can remember who could fathom touching the salad bar, even if brunch ran from 11 to 1h30. But now, in this post-mandatory meal plan age, I can create a happy compromise between my palate and gastronomic acceptability norms. It’s a breakfast salad. And it’s so freaking nutrient-packed that dietitians should shed low-sodium tears of hushed awe upon beholding its calcium-rich glory. And it tastes like sweet, nutty victory.

Ingredients:
- Salad greens (arugula is a must)
- Small (gala) apple, sliced any way you like–about half of one will do
- Greek yogurt–as much as you’d like
- 1-2 slices of your favorite hearty bread, sliced into bite-sized chunks
- Honey or agave nectar, to taste
- Black pepper
- Mixed seeds for garnish (optional; I had some from my multi-seed bread bag)

Create a bed of salad greens. Throw down half of the bread chunks. Spoon on as much yogurt as you want over them. Add the remaining bread chunks and top with the apples. Drizzle some sweet stuff over it. Sprinkle on the seeds. Crack a little pepper on top. Go out and kick some patootie. Or read some Vonnegut.

Quick–>minimal time.
Simple–>minimal ingredients.
Cold–>minimal end-user energy use.

And now, a word from our unpaid author: Got extra bread? Make your next meal with this same ingredient list for The Sandwich to Write Home About.

The peculiar adjective “crunchy granola” is often applied to people with generally “slow” sensibilities about food. Now I understand why: Homemade granola is amazingly simple, cheap as dirt, and twice as good as any store-bought version. Anybody who cares about what they’re eating (and at least kind of likes granola) should try making it.

Its constituent ingredients keep pretty much forever and are things you ought to have in your pantry anyway. Once it’s done, granola keeps in a ziploc bag or tupperware for much longer than it will take you to eat it. (In the interest of fact-checking, I tried to actually find out how long granola will keep. No one seems to know. I found answers varying from one week to six months.  I’m guessing about a month and am going to keep eating mine until I have a good reason not to. Anybody have any actual knowledge here?)

It’s good with yogurt, milk, or just by itself. Spend just 45 minutes making a batch of granola and you’ll have several weeks’ worth of breakfasts at your fingertips.

I particularly like granola because it’s a breakfast that I can just have ready to go at work. I keep some at my desk and some yogurt in the fridge so that when I wake up late, I can shower, grab a cup of coffee, and bolt for the subway, knowing that a good breakfast will be waiting for me.

My first granola experiment was inspired by a post by the Amateur Gourmet, and I’m deeply in debt to Adam Roberts (the eponymous gourmet) for turning me on to what will now be a staple of my kitchen. The recipe below is a slightly tweaked version of the one he used (which, in turn, was from “Baked: New Frontiers in Baking” by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito of the Baked Bakery in Red Hook)

The critical ingredient here is actually the salt. Too little and your granola is likely to be blasé, and nobody wants blasé granola.

Crunchy Granola for Dirty Hippies and Everyone Else

2 1/2 cups rolled oats
1/4 cup vegetable or canola oil
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tsps. cinnamon
1-2 tsps. salt
Nuts of your choosing
Dried Fruit of your choosing

1. Preheat oven to 325. Combine oil, honey, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, and salt in a large bowl. Add oats and toss to coat. The mixture should be sticky, but not dripping with liquid.

2. Spread the granols in a thin layer on  a wax or parchment paper line baking sheet or dish. (I used a dish, which I liked because I could easily spread and mix the granola without spilling any.) Place in oven.

3. Cooking time is about 25-30 minutes, but there’s plenty of wiggle room. Take the pan out every ten minutes or so and mix the granola around to prevent sticking. Taste regularly, keeping in mind that things will crisp up when it cools. The granola shouldn’t brown, and the pan on the right above is actually overdone. It was still really good.

4. If your nuts are untoasted add them toward the end of cooking so that they have time to toast but don’t burn. Add toasted nuts and dried fruit after you remove the granola from the oven.

(Welcome to Breakfast Briefs. If you’re like me, you find yourself rushing out the door hungry and undercaffeinated many a morning, the inevitable result of which is $6 spent on a bad egg sandwich and coffee fit only for war criminals. In these posts, I’m going to share my tips and tricks for getting to work fed without adding more than 5 or 10 minutes to your morning routine.)

As the mercury sinks, my hunger for oatmeal rises. I never ate oatmeal as a kid (it isn’t either of my parents’s cup of tea), but a few years after I moved north, a friend of mine introduced me to the joys of steel-cut oats. I’ve loved oatmeal ever since.

The problem with oatmeal, steel-cut oats especially, is that they involve cooking and seasoning and a lot of dishes coated with sticky oatmeal residue. Not a recipe for an easy weekday breakfast. And the alternative is that stuff in the little envelopes that you combine with water to produce apple-cinnamon-scented wallpaper paste. Eugh.

Or at least this is what a lot of people think. But the truth is that you can have delicious hot oatmeal at your desk with just a little bit of prep the night before.

First, two caveats :

1. If you work somewhere where eating at your desk is frowned upon, well, I’m sorry for you. You can, however, still prep this oatmeal the night before and eat it at home. Not quite as time-efficient as eating at work, but so it goes.

2. If you are an absolute and total steel-cut purist, this is not going to work for you. Steel-cut oats, for those of you who don’t know, are rough-cut and pellet-like rather than being rolled like traditional oatmeal. They take time to cook – and they’re worth it – but they’re really a weekend food. Still, I urge you steel-cut oats enthusiasts to try this technique. I used to think I liked only steel-cut, but the fact was that I just didn’t like that awful stuff that comes out of packets. I think that home-made rolled oats are almost as good as their steel cut cousins.

Oatmeal To-Go

1 plastic take-out container or tupperware, at least pint-size
1/2 cup rolled oats (also called quick oats and are available in bulk)
Add-ins (raisins, almonds, frozen fruit, etc.)
Sweetener of choice (Brown sugar, honey, maple syrup, etc.)
Pinch of salt (Critical. Trust me.)
Milk and/or water

Combine all of the above ingredients except the milk/water in the container. That’s basically all the “work” of this recipe. You can do it the night before, you can make a week’s worth of oatmeal meals at a time, or – if you have an excessive amount of tupperware – you can ready a year of breakfasts on one rainy Sunday.

(Obviously, if you’re using frozen fruit, wait until the night before. I’d also wait if you’re using syrup or honey as a sweetener. Theoretically, both are shelf-stable, but I don’t know about combining them with oats and then leaving them lying around. Science experiement anybody?)

When it’s time to eat, just add liquid to cover plus a half-inch or so more, and microwave for two to three minutes. Given the huge number of variables that can affect how the oats cook (microwave, fat content of milk, age of oats, variety of add-ins, altitude, humidity, etc.), it will probably take some tweaking with the amount of liquid and cooking time to get perfect oatmeal. But mine has never come out badly, and it didn’t take me too long to hit on a formula I really liked.

Even though you can make this oatmeal with just water, I find it to be much, much better with at least some milk in it. I am also fortunate that my workplace provides milk for coffee (Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to add non-dairy creamer to your oatmeal. And, while we’re on the subject, what the HELL is in non-dairy creamer?!?!? Ewww.), but if yours doesn’t, there are several possible remedies: You can buy milk to keep in the fridge at work. Or, you can add your milk at home, either the night before (and keep it in the fridge) or in the morning. Just be sure your container is tightly sealed, as a briefcase leaking milk is generally frowned upon regardless of your office’s policy on breakfast at your desk.

(Welcome to Breakfast Briefs. If you’re like me, you find yourself rushing out the door hungry and undercaffeinated many a morning, the inevitable result of which is $6 spent on a bad egg sandwich and coffee fit only for war criminals. In these posts, I’m going to share my tips and tricks for getting to work fed without adding more than 5 or 10 minutes to your morning routine.)

Egg sandwiches: easy, cheap, portable, filling, delicious, versatile. The list goes on, but I think it’s the “easy” point that I’m going to need to convince people on. So here we go:

You can make an egg sandwich in five minutes.

You can. Have faith in yourself. And what’s more, you can do it with cheap ingredients that will last in your fridge for up to a month. Egads!

So get yourself a timer and take my five-minute egg sandwich challenge:

There are really just three ingredients in an egg sandwich:

Eggs – I buy mine from the farmer’s market. They keep in the fridge for at least three weeks.

Bread – I like sliced multigrain. Buy whatever kind you like, and keep it in the freezer. You can also use fresh bread if you have some, but I have serious problems with bread getting moldy before I eat it all.

Condiment – Whatever you like. Ketchup is a standby, and I really like putting jam on egg sandwiches. I made this one with avocado hummus.

So with your ingredients on hand, you’re ready for the five minute egg sandwich.

1. Put bread in toaster oven

2. Heat olive oil or butter in a frying pan.

3. Add egg to frying pan.

4. Spread out aluminum foil. This is what you will wrap your egg sandwich in.

5a. Cook egg to doneness. I like mine very runny, as egg-yolk soaked bread is one of the most delicious things ever. If you like your egg well-cooked, you’re wrong, but I’m not going to hunt you down or anything. Probably not anyway.

5b. Take toast from toaster oven. Place on foil. Smear with condiment of choice.

5c. Now, here’s the only tricky part. Depending on how well-cooked you like your eggs vs. how toasted you like your toast, your egg may be done before your toast is ready. If so, put the egg on a plate or paper towel temporarily. Tricky, right?

7. Assemble sandwich. I prefer the egg between the two slices of toast, but feel free to be creative.

8. Wrap and run. Bang. Breakfast in five minutes.

(This is the first in a series of posts that I’m calling Breakfast Briefs. If you’re like me, you find yourself rushing out the door hungry and undercaffeinated many a morning, the inevitable result of which is $6 spent on a bad egg sandwich and coffee fit only for war criminals. In these posts, I’m going to share my tips and tricks for getting to work fed without adding more than 5 or 10 minutes to your morning routine.)

I roll my eyes at those non-coffee-drinkers (bloody puritans) out there who look down on my habit, but I am the first to admit that I’m addicted. Whether it’s 6 AM on a Tuesday or noon on a Saturday, I need my coffee to wake up. So if I don’t get my fix before I leave the house, my wallet will be arriving at work a few dollars lighter.

So what’s my solution? A french press? A $500 espresso maker? Bottled frappucinos? Sucking on coffee beans on the 4 train?

Nope, just iced coffee, ready and waiting for me in the fridge every morning.

And how do I make it? Do I use the Times‘s excellent recipe for a less bitter brew?

No I do not.

My dark secret that will have coffee lovers shuddering in their seats after the jump.

My iced coffee, which I love almost as much as any iced coffee I’ve ever bought involves a $15 electric coffeepot and Folgers. That’s right. Folgers. In my cup.

Once a week I brew a big pot of Folgers coffee (a big, red 2.5 pound tub cost me less than $10, or the cost of three large iced coffees from the ‘bucks), let it cool, pour it into those tall quart size takeout containers, and stick it in the fridge. Then, every morning, I mix some up with milk, add ice, and drink it while I get ready for work. And if I’m in a rush, I just take it in a thermos to go.

My father has been doing this for years, and for years I’ve thought he was crazy. Drinking cheap coffee that’s been sitting in the fridge for a week? No, thank you. Then, one day, I was desperate. I did it. I drank the Folgers.

And it was good. At least, good enough for me. And here comes the major caveat: I like my iced coffee strong, but with lots of milk. And Folgers is perfect for this. If you drink your iced coffee black or with a minimum of milk and/or you don’t like strong coffee, I doubt this coffee is for you.

I also like drinking iced coffee year round, but I understand why not everyone would. But even if you only replace your takeout coffee half the year, you still stand to save hundreds of dollars.

Finally, let me declare that I have not been paid by the Folgers corporation, this would work just as well with Maxwell House, Juan Valdez, or some even cheaper coffee lurking out there for my father and I to find and purchase.

Think of me what you will, but my morning coffee for the past two months has cost less than $10 total. And it has all been good enough until the last drop.