The Food Lover's Challenge: Diverse Breakfasts

Meet Kate. She is my coworker and friend and she is now my competitor in the weekly food lover's challenge.

We both like to be active and we both love food but we've come up with a way that we can love food creatively and in moderation. A few weeks ago, instead of snacking on the usual girl scout cookies one afternoon, we thought up the idea of a breakfast challenge. Each week, we'd  come up with a new way to inspire ourselves to eat better, more filling, or more unique breakfasts.

Not wanting to mess with my diet too much before the Baltimore Half Marathon, we waited until last Monday to begin. I was given the privilege of deciding the challenge for week one and I decided on: most diverse breakfasts. This was a big challenge for me, as I eat oatmeal or granola pretty much every day when I wake up. I planned carefully but a few days I got lazy. I had a very healthy mix of morning meals but too many days I included english muffins, yogurt, and/or eggs.

Kate, who really strove to vary her means of consuming protein, won the challenge with weird (and clever) breakfasts of spoonfuls of peanut butter, egg and pita pizza, salmon, and rolled up cheese and salami.

Another coworker, Julia, has been appointed our judge and I think she was fair in her assessment. My food was more colorful but it was less varied. But you better believe I will be competitive in this, as in all things. Kate proposed an expansion to include anything food related in the weekly challenge and, for this week, chose: a salad (of any sort- not necessarily green) a day, or most salads consumed.

I am very excited about this week and about the whole thing. We plan for this to go on indefinitely and I know it will be good for us. It is important to think about what you eat but is critical not to obsess about it. I am not doing this to lose weight or to lower my cholesterol. I am doing it to get creative with my meals, to try new things every week, and to participate in some healthy competition. 




Do you have any good salad recipes? Any clever ideas for the next week's challenge?