Pre-Breakfast Bar

This is our Coffee Corner in the kitchen. My morning medication to replace my obliterated thyroid requires that I wait for two hours (!!!) before eating solid food in the morning. If DH gets up before that time is up, he makes himself a little snack to hold him over.

To that end, on Sunday mornings, when I make our traditional Brunch Feast, I make extra bacon or sausage, and waffles, pancakes or French Toast to last through the subsequent six days of Breakfast Famine!

The photo above depicts the dedicated Coffee Corner for the preparation of this mini-feast.

Why am I telling you this? Because this is a very easy and economical way to have a nutritious snack on hand to pop into your mouth whenever the mood strikes. Hopefully, this precludes the purchase of a high-fat, oversized, and overpriced muffin that lies temptingly in wait as you check out a purchase. Great for travel, too.

I totally admit that I am not current on the prices of the offerings that are available at filling stations, but having glanced at the array when I go in to settle the gas purchase bill, I am appalled by what I have seen.

When we traveled more, I would always pop up a bunch of popcorn to take for the first two days on the road. This was a great treat. As time went on, I stopped putting even salt on it, and the snack was perfectly satisfactory in its bare-nekkid form!

Later on, our neighbor would always make us a lovely pumpkin bread to take along. This was great for coffee break time. When we moved away from living next door to them, I started making granola bar cookies. Those were great, too.

So just about any healthy snack that you can make up in advance will allow you to “have your cake and eat it too” – so to speak.

Moral of this? Make your own snacks and avoid the unhealthy ingredients that you find in already prepared foods that are waiting to sabotage your health. If it isn’t possible to make your own for one reason or another, please try to avoid the ones that are put out to tempt you. They are manufactured with ingredients that are meant to preserve the “freshness” of the item for a long time. This is probably not a really good thing.

Whenever possible, try to eat as many things as possible that do not require an ingredients label, i.e. a piece of fresh fruit or vegetable, nuts, seeds, etc..

The next step up is to pair cheese or peanut butter with a whole wheat cracker of some kind – we favor Triscuits (original), as their ingredient label consists of “whole wheat grain, canola oil, sea salt”. The flavored Triscuits have an ingredients list which is downright scary!

If all else fails, and a bag of treats must be purchased, try for pretzels. They are not easily over eaten, thus provide a fair amount of “crunch” satisfaction per smaller quantity.

 

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