Filed under: Breakfast, Business, Health & Medical

In an effort to help you eat more cereal eat more healthily, the Kellogg Company is joining the USDA's MyPyramid Corporate Challenge.

The breakfast cereal giant will be promoting (healthy) "eating and physical fitness for families," as well as putting the MyPyramid icon on cereal boxes. They'll also be launching L.A.U.N.C.H. (learning and understanding nutrition choices & health) next fall in elementary and middle schools.

What all this means is hard to say. I couldn't find out what L.A.U.N.C.H. will actually do, or how Kellogg's will actually encourage healthy eating. But the cereal maker did get its start as a maker of (what it considered) health food, and the company does still claim a strong theme of health and wellness in its products. So what do you think: will Kellogg's really do anything or is this a marketing gimmick?

[Via Baking Business]

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Filed under: Breakfast, On the Blogs, How To

Bagels are one of my favorite breakfast items. They're so easy and tasty, and they travel well. Usually if I want to make a special weekend breakfast, though, it's not bagels- for all the previously mentioned reasons. But what if I made them from scratch? Well, that'd be a different story.

Joe Pastry, one of my favorite baking blogs, has been talking a lot about bagels this week. Joe talks about everything from high gluten flour to how much sugar and baking soda go into his boiling water. There is a step by step photo guide to making bagels from scratch. The only thing Joe doesn't offer is a recipe for the dough, but you can find some here and here.

Unfortunately, I can't link directly to individual posts on Joe Pastry. All of the above mentioned posts are very recent, though, and you can get to them by scrolling down just a little bit. That is, if you're going to make bagels this weekend!

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Filed under: Breakfast, On the Blogs, Feast Your Eyes

I love the word flapjack. It's one I often forget about as I grew up knowing griddle-cooked rounds of batter as pancakes, but every time I hear it, my ears perk up. It has an old-fashioned ring that appeals to my inner pioneer girl. I believe that life would be better if there were more flapjacks involved.

I particularly like this picture of Elana's dairy-free flapjacks, as she has captured the batter in action and you can nearly feel the heat of that grill (such a nice, well-seasoned grill!). As luck would have it, the recipe is also available on her blog, so if this picture makes you crave a nice stack of flapjacks, you have immediate recourse.

Thanks Elana, for adding your photo to the Slashfood Flickr pool!

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Filed under: Breakfast, Dessert, Recipes, Fruit, Spring, Summer

Fresh papayas are in season, and I keep finding myself in the grocery store, picking up various specimens and thinking "what are the chances I could eat all this before it went bad?"

I used to not like fresh papaya. I found them sickly sweet, tasting of cheap perfume with undertones of dirt. But that was before I learned to toss the fresh cubed fruit in copious amounts of lemon or lime juice, to cut the sweetness and bring out the intense floral notes. Cubes of coral-colored papaya make a beautiful addition to fruit salad (and they're a heck of a lot easier to cut than mango!); they're also terrific in smoothies or in sweet-tart salsa, served over salmon or Mahi-Mahi. But my favorite use is probably papaya sorbet. This Martha Stewart recipe, with lime juice and honey, is healthy enough to eat for breakfast. I bet it would be absolutely amazing in a parfait with granola and creamy, tart yogurt gelato.

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Filed under: Breakfast

In 2006, Treehugger.com wrote about the introduction of a line of organic cereals by Kellogg's. The article talked about concerns surrounding "organic" being taken over by a mega-corporation, but decided that ultimately organic of any sort was a good thing.

At the same time, a Rice Krispies-loving consumer (me) discovered Organic Rice Krispies on the shelf at her local supermarket. To say I was excited might be an understatement. I love the Snap, Crackle, and Pop, but I do not love high fructose corn syrup and pesticides - neither of which were found in the organic version. Sure, it was more expensive and sure, they didn't make it in the large box that I preferred due to my frequent cereal consumption, but I was willing to splurge.

Alas, one day, Organic Rice Krispies was no longer on the shelves. I assumed it had to do with lack of consumer interest at my particular store. Today, after much time had passed, I decided to find out where I could buy them by emailling Kellogg's. I will credit them for their speedy response, but it did not make me happy: "This product is no longer marketed by our company, since consumer demand simply does not warrant its continued production. At this time, there are no plans to reintroduce this product."

I didn't specifically ask about any of the other cereals in their organic line, but I assume the worst. Does anyone else miss them?

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Filed under: Breakfast, Recipes, Bread

Not really sure why this is called Wife Saver French Toast (I'd love to hear the story of how they came up with the name for it - I imagine a wife mad at her husband and he has to make his own breakfast that morning), but it sounds quite good.

Note: it's not a recipe for French Toast where you just dip the bread in liquid and throw it in a pan. You have to soak this overnight and then bake it in the oven for 50 minutes. So maybe the wife got mad at the hubby the night before and had to really plan this out for the next day's breakfast. (It also says to use "French bread," which I assume means the kind in the pic above and not square slices of thick toast?)

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Filed under: Breakfast, Raves & Reviews

As I mentioned in my post about my issues with following microwave directions, I was recently sent a bunch of Amy's products to sample. The first ones I'm going to review are the hot breakfast cereals - because breakfast comes first!

I am a cold cereal person. I eat it every single morning and also the occasional afternoon and evening. I like hot cereals, but I find cold milk (or soy milk in my case) is a refreshing way to start the day. I did, however, approach the Amy's hot cereals with an open mind.

After the jump, my overall review and my review of each cereal.

Continue reading Review: Amy's hot breakfast cereals

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Filed under: Breakfast, Recipes, Rice

The name of this recipe immediately brought to mind Chinese food, of course, and I've never thought of fried rice as a particularly breakfast-ish food. But if you think about it, a lot of fried rice has eggs and onion in it, so why not? And this one goes one step further and includes bacon.

The recipe is from Chow, but the picture is from flickr. It's a different recipe (ham instead of bacon and no soy sauce), but I couldn't find a pic of the Chow recipe, which is after the jump.

Continue reading Breakfast Fried Rice

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Filed under: Breakfast

Some microwave meals can be an exercise in following instructions. I'm perfectly capable of following the instructions - if, that is, I read them.

I was recently sent a bunch of Amy's frozen meals to sample. My reviews will be coming to Slashfood soon. I have lots of experience with Amy's products and I love them. I've been a longtime Amy's evangelist and that was before they sent me free stuff.

I had not, however, tried their hot breakfast cereals. To cook the lunches, I always ignore the instructions such as "make a 1 inch slit in the over-wrap" (did I bring my ruler to microwave?) and simply open the side of the over-wrap. I cook each meal for five minutes regardless of the recommend cook time and have never had a problem.

Well, it turns out the breakfast cereals cook for a different amount of time. The first one I tried was the Rolled Oats Hot Cereal Bowl. The directions said to cook for 4 minutes. I took that to mean all the breakfast cereals cook for 4 minutes. Not so. The Cream of Rice requires 3 1/2 minutes. In the photo above, you can see what happened at 4 minutes - a breakfast cereal eruption.

Am I the only one to ignore microwave directions?

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Filed under: Breakfast, Recipes, Baking, On the Blogs

I don't know about you, but I'm always looking for great weekend breakfast ideas. I want something that maybe takes a little more time than you have during the week, but won't take all day to make either. It also has to be something that tastes great and is suitably impressive.

I think I've found a new one to try for this weekend. A few days ago, while perusing the baking blogs, I came across this post from Bakers' Banter. While it starts out talking about whole grain pancakes, the post goes on to give a step by step, pictorial recipe for German pancakes. I seem to recall having seen them in a cookbook before I really got into cooking, but since I didn't cook I promptly forgot about them.

After reading this article, and seeing how good these pancakes look, I am definitely making them this weekend. What about you? If you try this recipe out, I'd love to hear about it!

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