The Breakfast Struggle - Congee vs Smoothie

Breakfast! My most hated meal of the day. I say hated because there is so much different advice on what to eat for breakfast, when to eat, should I skip and say I'm fasting, should I definitely eat breakfast because 'it's the most important meal of the day'. Seriously, I can't decide how to manage this meal. My work schedule is also all over the place so some mornings I start at 7am, (almost no time to prepare breakfast) and other days I start at 1pm (I could literally make a 3 course gourmet breaky). AND THEN there is the fact that my Chinese medicine training and nutritional medicine training give me OPPOSITE advice. Chinese medicine is all about eating regularly, at the same time each day and preferably consuming warm/cooked foods, where as my nutritional medicine study was all about nutrient density, calorie restriction and fasting as possible diets and they were quite big into raw foods. Brain explosion.

So I did what any normal person would do and combined the two. Although probably with a greater lean towards Chinese medicine theory just because I have been doing that for longer so my brain struggles to move away from those theories.

I decided that the best way to combine my East and West Nutritional knowledge was to make separate breakfasts based those theories and eat them on alternative days. (At this stage I am assuming you are thinking that I'm a little insane, giving this much thought to breakfast, but seriously, it's a real struggle for me).

Breakfast 1: Smoothie
This breakfast is really easy. I do this breakfast when I have to leave super early in the morning because I can mostly prepare it the night before, blend it in the morning when I get up and drink it on my way to work.

Ingredients

• Coconut water
• Kiwi fruit
• Strawberries
• Baby spinach
• Walnuts and sunflower seeds (half a palm size serve)
• 1 teaspoon of Maca powder

Breakfast 2: Carrot, chicken and sesame congee
This breakfast actually needs to be prepared in advance but once it's made, it can be eaten for a week. I usually make a large pot of it on a Sunday (using a slow cooker) and then divide it up into containers for the week ahead.
Ingredients

• 1 cup rice (I use basmati)
• 1L organic chicken stock
• 4 cups water
• 2 carrots, peeled and roughly diced
• 3 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely sliced
• 1 brown onion, finely diced
• 2 tablespoons of sesame seeds

Cooking directions: This is so easy! All I do is wash rice, put everything in the slow cooker and set to low for 8 hours. It turns into a porridge like product. I think this made 4-6 serves. I put them in separate containers then on the mornings that I eat congee, I heat in microwave or on the stove and add a tiny bit of soy sauce and sesame oil.

And there you have it. The obsessive thought process of a food nerd.