A Mindful Breakfast: Spinach and Tomato Egg White Omelette

Breakfast is the most challenging meal of the day for me. It is difficult to put together a healthy, complete breakfast when your eyes are bleary with sleep and you can barely stand up straight. Being at home during the day has made me more conscious of my breakfast choices, but there are times when I hearken back to the days of commuting an hour and a half to work and quickly scarfing down a Starbucks breakfast sandwich, or whatever piece of chocolate or leftover baked good I could find in my apartment. Then there were those days when I didn't eat breakfast at all, and rectified my low blood sugar with a can of coke at 10 AM...yeah, those were the days. I am a reformed woman, though, and I eat breakfast every day, and 95% of the time, it is healthy and mindfully eaten. I definitely thrive on having a wide selection of breakfast varieties available to me, so that I don't slip back into eating sugary cereals or other nutritionally-deficient options. I usually alternate between oatmeal, fruit, green smoothies and a variety of egg dishes. Today, I am sharing one of my favorite omelettes.

Mindful eating has always been a challenge for me. I have never been a fan of prepackaged food and convenience snacks, but I have always been a fan of anything butter-laden and decadent. I still love desserts and baked indulgences, but I save them for the weekend or special occasions. Anyway, I digress. Back to the point. When I make my food myself and consciously choose to use fresh produce, and the most natural ingredients I can afford, I am a more healthy, happy and satisfied person. My diet directly affects how I feel, and a good breakfast can set the tone for the entire day. This weekend, I had several sodas, pizza, and fast food. I felt awful. I know that is directly related to my dietary choices and my body screaming at me to eat something with nutritional value and devoid of all traces of high-fructose corn syrup.

Meyer Lemon Meringues

I love to bake and cook. It is a passion so intense that lately I question my decision to become a teacher and wonder why I never went to culinary school. Being a complete amateur and self-taught cook gives me lots of room to make culinary mistakes though, and for that I am grateful. The cookies that I am posting about today are anything but a mistake. They are a delicious, relatively guilt-free, home-run of a treat. That's great for my recipe binder, and even better for my ample hips. A quick, pre-recipe note. I love to eat healthily. I have made a lot of changes to my diet over the past three years and for the most part, we eat a really balanced, whole foods diet in our home. Sometimes, this conflicts with my intense, long-standing love affair with all things butter and sugar and yeasty deliciousness. I have reconciled some of my guilt by realizing that anything I make at home, from scratch, with quality ingredients, is a bazillion times better for me than something from the store out of a preservative-laden box. So I bake. And I use sugar. And butter. And eggs. And I sample the batter along the way, and eat giant slices of cake. Yup. As long as I know what's in it and I make the choice to consume those things, it's okay. So you will see a variety of delicious, healthy recipes on here, and also some major indulgences-or rather, foodulgences.