Blueberries

I was searching the Skinnytaste website for some meal ideas and looked through her breakfast recipes.  I seem to fall into a rut of having oatmeal or eggs.  I know there are other options out there but I want to make sure it is something that will hold me over.  There is nothing worse than eating and being hungry a few short hours later.

I had some blueberries on hand and when I found two different recipes using blueberries I picked up just a few other ingredients and went to work in the kitchen.

The first was Honey Coconut Blueberry Bran Muffins.  I LOVE bran muffins.  I suspect as a kid growing up bran muffins were supposed to be tasteless and boring.  Well they don’t have to be.  I love the bran muffin offered on the NCL cruise ships we have been on.  Remember what your Grandmother always said about bran?  It helps keep you regular!  Don’t shy away from a bran muffin the next time you have a chance to try one.

I followed the recipe as written and just halved the ingredients the best I could to only make 8 muffins.  I’m not 100% sure my wheat bran is still good.  It smelled a bit funny and the muffins tasted a bit off.  They were also not sweet.  That was difficult because as a standalone this wouldn’t be a muffin I’d really eat.  However, spread some peanut butter on it and add a drizzle of honey and it is a really good muffin!

I think I also put in a bit too many blueberries.  I didn’t measure those and just threw them in.  They were super moist and I probably should have cooked them a bit longer or added less blueberries.  I don’t think I’ll be making this recipe again.  I do need to get some new wheat bran though and research other bran muffin recipes.

The second was Baked Oatmeal with Blueberries and Bananas.  I have yet to try a baked oatmeal recipe that I really like.  I like oatmeal but I would prefer baked oatmeal to be more firm and usually it is really soft.  It feels like a soggy oatmeal loaf.  With that being said, this recipe wasn’t any different.  I didn’t put in any banana and I also added chia seeds.  I tried to add a bit more liquid to plan for the addition of the chia seeds.  I also halved this recipe and baked it in a loaf pan so I only had three servings.

Mine looked a bit funny but still tasted okay.  I re-heated my piece by toasting it in the toaster oven to try and get it to firm up.  I also added peanut butter and honey.  This is a pretty small portion for the PPVs though.  I had my piece after I had gotten home from work so I wasn’t worried about the “hold-over” factor of the baked oatmeal.

As with the muffin recipe, I won’t be trying this again.  It was still fun to experiment with different breakfast ideas and try to get out of my comfort zone.