Breakfast anyone?

OK, I promised there would be recipes on this blog, so let's get to it.

As I think about what recipes to share, I can't help but want to start simple and healthy.  Lord knows I love my vegan desserts and have found a bunch of great recipes, which I promise to share with you soon.  I feel the most useful thing to start with is my magic combo that always seems to launch me into the day full of energy and focus.

Most mornings I start my day with a run of varying distances. During the week, I usually run somewhere between 3-7 miles every morning. Before I run, I have a glass of water and a banana; afterwards I make myself a smoothie with these general ingredients:

Rudy’s Monster Morning Smoothie

1 banana
A bunch of frozen fruit (I buy the big bags at Fairway that have a combination of mango, blueberry, raspberry and blackberry.)
1 scoop protein powder (I use either the Vega One All-in-One Nutritional Shake or, more recently, the Vega Sport Performance Protein.)
2 tbs. chia seeds
2-3 leaves of kale

Almond milk (Use enough to get a good consistency. Play around to figure out what you like.)
Grind that sucker up in your blender (I use a Ninja, but any of the stronger ones will do) and pour into a mason jar and you’re all set. Simple, fast, health, mostly raw and full of the carbohydrates, protein and just a little fat you need to recover right and be energized for the rest of the day.

I sip on this all morning and it usually keeps me full and full of energy till lunch.

I'm pretty robotic about lunch, especially when I have to pack my lunch in the morning. I don't want to have to think about what I feel like eating or get into doing too much cooking in the morning. So I have gotten in the habit of making myself a salad chock full of healthy veggies with a healthy source of protein and a little healthy fat.

Here is my typical salad arsenal:

Salad greens (I mixed up each week. Sometimes I use spinach and sometimes I use mixed greens.)
Peppers (red, orange or yellow)
Carrots (I chop up baby carrots and throw them in there. Carrots are healthy, right?)
Cucumber
Cherry tomatoes
Pumpkin seeds
Avocado
Olives
 A protein source (I mixed this up every week, sometimes its tempeh bacon, sometimes its Gardein fake chicken. Today it is actually a Field Roast sausage).

I dress it with a light dressing. Newman’s Own has some good ones.

The key is to make yourself a BIG salad. Maybe you are familiar with making a salad for your family to eat with dinner. Well, that is about the size of the salad I make myself for lunch. You really can’t eat too much salad, but you can definitely eat too little.

So give this a try and let me know what you think. Depending on how hard I train in the morning, I may snack a lot or just have a piece of fruit to go along with this. Do yourself a favor and pick out some healthy snacks and take them to work with you as well, just in case you get hungry. What I am finding is that as I increase the quality of the food I am eating with lots of fresh fruits and veggies the less I need to eat within the day.