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Breakfast Week. Win a spa weekend for two!

Hands up who eats breakfast? Me, me me!! I love everything about breakfast, the traditional breakfast foods and drinks and the fact that I wake up every morning ravenous enough to eat a horse (or maybe a bacon sandwich)!

Confession time, I adore junk cereal – particularly
that cinnamon one – but I have given up boxed
cereal entirely due to the fact that most of it is
packed with sugar.

Instead, I enjoy homemade porridge (see below) or wholemeal toast with fresh fruit or egg and bacon (or all of these!) and a mug of good strong coffee.

According to the BBC, breakfast as we know it didn’t exist for large parts of history. The Romans didn’t really eat it, usually consuming only one meal a day around noon.

In the Middle Ages monastic life shaped when people ate; nothing could be eaten before morning Mass and meat could only be eaten for half of the year. It’s thought the word breakfast entered the English language during this time and literally meant “break the night’s fast”.

Religious ritual also gave us the full English breakfast. On Collop Monday, the day before Shrove Tuesday, people had to use up meat before the start of Lent. Much of that meat was pork and bacon as pigs were kept by many people. The meat was often eaten with eggs, which also had to be used up, and the precursor of the full English breakfast was born.

After the restoration of Charles II, coffee, tea and dishes like scrambled eggs started to appear on the tables of the wealthy. By the late 1740s, breakfast rooms also started appearing in the homes of the rich.

The Industrial Revolution regularised working hours, with labourers needing an early meal to sustain them at work. All classes started to eat a meal before going to work, even the bosses.

And so our modern day breakfast routine was established.

Win a spa weekend for two

What’s your favourite breakfast? 

If you take a photo of it and upload it to the Shakeupyourwakeup campaign website you could win a spa weekend!

Enter the competition

They have lots of breakfast ideas on their website too.

Here are my two favourite Dairy Diary breakfasts:

Banana Porridge

Serves 4
Time 8 mins
Calories 174 per portion
Fat 2g of which 0.4g is saturated

Porridge oats 110g (4oz)
Ground cinnamon 1 tbsp
Honey 3 tbsp
Banana 1 large, sliced

1 Put oats and 500ml (18fl oz) water in a pan and bring up to boil. Simmer for 4 minutes, stirring occasionally.

2 Add most of cinnamon and honey and cook for 1 minute.

3 Add most of banana slices and stir.

Serve with remaining slices of banana on top, drizzled with remaining honey and sprinkled with cinnamon.

A Dairy Diary recipe.

Scrambled Eggs with Smoked Salmon

Preparation time 4 minutes
Cooking time 3 minutes
Calories per portion 766 Kcal
Fat per portion 55g of which saturated 25.2g
Serves 2

Butter 75g (3oz), softened
Tomato purée 2 tsp
Chopped dill 2 tbsp, plus a few fronds to garnish
Capers 2–3 tbsp, well drained and roughly chopped
Freshly ground black pepper
Mediterranean-style bread with olives 4 slices, approximately 2cm (¾in) thick, cut diagonally
Eggs 5 large, beaten
Smoked salmon slices 100g packet, cut into thin strips
Beefsteak tomato 1, deseeded and diced, to garnish (optional)

1 Put 50g (2oz) of the butter into a small bowl, then add the tomato purée, chopped dill and capers. Season with black pepper, then mix well together and set aside.

2 Toast the bread and keep warm.

3 Melt the remaining butter in a small saucepan (preferably non-stick), add the eggs and half of the salmon strips. Then cook over a moderate heat, stirring continuously, until the eggs are softly scrambled – taking care not to overcook, as they will become dry.

4 Spread the toasted bread with the tomato butter and put onto two serving plates. Spoon the scrambled eggs on top, garnish with the remaining strips of salmon, dill and the chopped tomato, and serve immediately.

Cook’s Tip. For quick assembly, prepare all the ingredients before starting to cook and toast the bread while scrambling the eggs.

Recipe from Just One Pot Dairy Cookbook

#breakfastweek

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