You’ve heard it before: it’s the most important meal of the day! But are you starting your day with a healthy breakfast that gets you out the door on time and still keeps you fueled up and energized till lunch?
More often than not, if we grab breakfast at all, it’s a sugar-laded or nutritiously devoid option that might leave us hangry and crashing just a few hours later. If you’re blaming your busy schedule for this, that excuse stops now, with these quick, healthy breakfasts you can easily prep a week’s worth of so you still make it out the door on time and start your day off smart.
Freezer Breakfast Sandwiches
Forget drive throughs and salty, fat-loaded sandwiches that will leave you crashing and hungry again a few hours later (not to mention, can do a number on your wallet if they’re a regular habit!) You can easily make your own breakfast sandwiches and freeze them for a quick, healthy breakfast option.
Grab your favorite choice of carb (bagel, English muffin, sprouted wheat bread), and layer it with your desired protein (think tofu, plant-based patties, turkey, or egg,) and finish it with a healthy fat like avocado or a slice of cheese. You can customize them to your liking and dietary needs, and enjoy them all week long.
Here’s a great vegan version to get your culinary wheels turning:
https://veganhuggs.com/vegan-breakfast-sandwich/
Pancakes
Pancakes don’t need to be a weekend-only treat, and they’re certainly not only sugary piles of white carbs and syrup—not these versions.
Pancakes are endlessly adaptable and can actually be made entirely without any common culprits like white flour, oil, eggs, or butter. If you’re vegan or gluten free, there are plenty of ways to adapt pancake recipes by using bases such as oat flour, your favorite protein powder, and mashed bananas, applesauce, or flax eggs in the place of eggs and butter. For the liquids, you can use your favorite plant-based milk or even stir in some yogurt for extra protein and calcium.
Once you’ve mastered your favorite pancake recipe, you can make a large batch ahead of time and freeze them (we recommend stacking then with pieces of parchment paper in between each cake to prevent them sticking together as they freeze.) When you’re running out the door, just grab a couple, stick them in the toaster, or take them with you and heat them up at work, then top with your favorite berries, sliced banana, peanut butter drizzles, and/or agave or honey.
Here’s a super simple vegan recipe to get you started:
https://www.popsugar.com/fitness/Vegan-Pancake-Recipe-35270589
Smoothies
If you’re looking for something a little lighter and lower carb that will start your day right, smoothies are the obvious choice. While you might not want to fully create them ahead of time, you can save a lot of time by getting the prep work done the night before or even assembling a week’s worth of smoothie ingredients on the weekend when you do your meal prep. Portion out your chosen fruits and veggies, like berries, sliced banana, a handful of spinach, and toss them all into individual zip lock baggies, then stick in the freezer. In the morning, all you have to do is toss your frozen goodies in the freezer, add your choice of juice or milk, any extras you want like peanut butter, and blend away.
Here are 7 delicious ideas to make ahead of time!
https://www.self.com/gallery/7-frozen-smoothie-recipes-to-prep-on-sundays-for-the-best-week-ever
Overnight Oats
Overnight oats are quite possibly the perfect make-ahead meal, thanks to the fact that they actually get yummier in the fridge as the week goes on. Overnight oats, if you’re not familiar, are an uncooked cousin of traditional oatmeal, eaten cold, and great to make en masse and keep in your fridge for filling breakfasts you can grab as you’re rushing out the door.
To make, we like using glass pint mason jars but any bowl or small container will do. You’ll then mix up an almost-endlessly adaptable blend of oats, your choice of liquids like plant milk or yogurt, spice, nuts, fruit, peanut butter, etc., and then pour into containers and keep in the fridge at least overnight.
Here’s 15 different delicious varieties you can try out: https://www.buzzfeed.com/samimain/delicious-ways-to-make-overnight-oats?bfpi&crlt.pid=camp.nfZjCYgR5nGj&utm_term=.fppLj74jp#.mqYmlRJlk
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