Breakfast Bonanza

2007 is the start of a new era - gym membership for the first time in a decad coupled with a personal trainer who is helping me make drastic changes to the way I eat. Not so much a diet but a different emphasis. Most notably breakfast is changing from muesli with fruit (I seem to have eaten that all my life and am quite happy with the repetitive nature of it) to a cooked & larger breakfast.

It has required more than a little inventiveness but here are a few of the successes:

- porridge - a new thing for me (i recall lumpy and flavourless of a childhood) but many variations on a theme, mostly involving added fruit (dried, fresh and cooked) but the real revelation was the morning when I'd run out of milk so made it with water and elderflower cordial.,

- bacon - grilled with sciroppo di amarene (from carluccios) drizzled on top, accompanied by poached eggs and sauteed mushrooms & cherry tomatoes. The balsamic glaze found in waitrose is another variation on this theme. As an alternative to tomato ketchup I recommend crab-apple jelly/jam or redcurrant jelly

- scrambled eggs - i discovered exmouth market farmers market on friday and purchased some italian eggs and chanterelle mushrooms for saturday morning scramble. as i had some parma ham lying about i fried it like bacon, added the chanterelle's and then the eggs. fabulous colours as well as flavours. ditto the use of crab-apple jelly.

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