If there’s one thing that I cherish in the morning, it’s coffee.  Hot freakin’ coffee, usually with creamer and a sugar in the raw.  Well, per the 28 day Challenge rules, creamer (along with all dairy) is out.  It took me about two fully pained days to really evolve my despair into a solution: americano w/cinnamon (and/or cocoa).  This little treat managed to propel me through days 6-10 with little feeling of depravation and a new appreciation for the flavor.  Coconut milk is also an optional additive, but that would almost ruin the beauty of the americano.

In addition to the morning coffee struggle, breakfast has been the biggest challenge for me.  I’m typically not huge on breakfast and take a little time to work up my hunger so it’s been a challenge (for lack of better words) for me to create breakfast options that are on plan and appealing to me during early mornings.  Here are a few of my favorites:

Ingredients + directions:

1/2 cup Zucchini + yellow squash: sautéd in coconut oil w/Trader Joe’s ‘everyday seasoning’

3 eggs + 2 egg whites: scrambled in with squash

Applegate turkey bacon: cooked separately (FSG recommends cooking it ALL & keeping extra in fridge for easy adding)

Scramble all together. Serves 2 (hungry bears)

I love eggs, so variations of this are increasingly common around here in the morning, but for the days that I’m still questionable on the real morning food front I will go with a smoothie.  I’ve shared  some of these VitaMix favorites in previous posts, but this week in an attempt to use up some strawberries, I took a different direction.

We’re going to call this the ‘thank god strawberries are on plan’ smoothie.  It has helped to subside any screams for sugar, and tastes awesome.

Ingredients: (all added into the VitaMix & blended)

10 Ice cubes

1 cup water

1 cup (light) coconut milk

8 medium strawberries

1 (frozen) banana

2 table spoons of fresh ground almond butter

All in all, this week has been pretty good in the morning fuel selection so far, and has helped us to push through an overload of work and ‘to-do-right NOW’s.’

Anyone else have any must-try clean breakfast options? This weekend is looking like a clean slate of prep days, and I’d love to play around with any recipes you have! We’ve got some pretty exciting plans coming up and would love to have your input included!