Recently I have been on a bit of a quest to find exciting food for breakfast and lunch. And by exciting, all I really mean something that isn’t toast or a yoghurt! The problem I am having on this quest, a problem that many people likely face, is that when I search online for ideas I get all these super fancy dishes which are, to be blunt, unrealistic. I’m never going to have time in the morning to prepare something that looks that good with that many ingredients!
We all know what I mean. Those lists of “great” ideas for breakfast meals which are all packed with exotic ingredients that pretty much no one has laying around. The meals might all look beautiful and be Instagram worthy, but I don’t have time to craft such an item so early in the day! I can assure all my readers that my breakfast will never look this good:
Aside from the fact that I don’t fancy a trip to Wholefoods in London just so I can buy some stuff to put on top of my breakfast that I’ll probably hate anyway, why is it that these lists I find everywhere seem more worried about good looking food than accessible food? I can’t be travelling to some magical land for that secret ingredient no one ever has stocked. Finding inspiration for breakfast and lunch foods that are exciting and cater to the masses is just about impossible.
Why the quest to find exciting breakfast and lunch food?
A while ago I made a post about Hello Fresh – be sure to check it out – and how it gave me interesting options for dinner which I might not have eaten before. I don’t religiously use this company but it has still made my dinners more exciting by expanding on what I usually eat and allowing me to experiment more with my meals.
Now I want to carry this over to my other meals of the day. Unfortunately, there isn’t a company (that I know of) that delivers breakfast food to your house! Shame really.
The main reason behind this quest for more exciting breakfast and lunch food is that I have fallen into bad habits. Too often I feel like I don’t have time in the morning to sort out my lunch and will swing by a convenience store on the way to work to pick up some less than healthy lunch. Typically, this is also an expensive lunch! (Perhaps I should try to pay more attention to a previous post of mine about building strong foundations for new habits!)
If I do manage to pack a lunch it is usually a boring sandwich, a packet of crisps, a chocolate ‘treat’ of some kind, and a small piece of cake. Not terribly unhealthy but you try having the same thing every day of your life. It becomes quite boring rather fast!
Breakfast is very hit and miss for me. Sometimes I won’t have any, sometimes I’ll have some biscuits, and sometimes I’ll have toast. Thrilling, I know.
That being said I have recently got a bit more varied in my breakfast foods, practically spurred on by the creation of this post. I have added 3 different types of cereal to the mix which I now enjoy in rotation each day. Cereal, however, is still not very exciting!
I want my breakfast and lunch foods to be more exciting so it’s something I look forward to and won’t want to skip. I’m not alone in this and if you find any similarities in your own life here, then let’s go exploring the vast world of food together!
Finding exciting food with Pinterest
One of the easiest ways to find exciting and good looking food for breakfast and lunch is on Pinterest. Yes, I know I practically abolished the idea of searching online at the start of this post but stay with me here!
For those of you not familiar with Pinterest, it is a type of social media except you share images (which are all typically publically viewable) with descriptions and, often, links to websites and blogs which have more information about whatever the image – whether a classic picture or an infographic – is about.
I use Pinterest myself as a way to market this site – check out my profile here! How does posting pictures on another site help bring people to mine? It’s because Pinterest is actually a search engine. It can help you find all manner of things but some topics are more prevalent than others. One of these topics is food!
You’ve probably heard of people taking pictures of their food for Instagram. Well, Pinterest is where this gets taken to the next level!
You can find my images of food, and other fun things, on my Instagram page here!
Not only do you get a picture of the food, but you often also get a recipe. Perhaps a link to a site with similar recipes. In particular, Pinterest can be useful to find “food groupings”. What do I mean by this?
Go on to Pinterest and try searching for “Healthy Foods”. What you’ll get is a bunch of – mostly- generic pictures which link to sites with lists of healthy foods. Perhaps you’ll stumble on a few infographics of what foods are particularly healthy.
Pinterest is truly a remarkable resource for visual searching. I would recommend using it to find out information about your next travel destination – you won’t regret it.
However, one major drawback of using Pinterest is what I discussed at the start of this post: meals are visually appealing but technically impossible to make. Not only are some of the ingredients a bit out there, but often the recipe information is found wanting – incomplete or lacking detail.
That’s not to say you won’t stumble upon a golden egg when using Pinterest. It just might take you some time.
The more traditional method to find exciting food
Outside of just searching on the internet with differing results, you might want to turn to something you probably already have sitting in your bookcase.
I speak of the myriad of cookbooks found in a lot of houses. In my house, there are probably more cookbooks than other kinds of books. They are overflowing from the bookcases and kitchen into all rooms of the house.
Given this library of resources which I already possess, it occurs to me that I should make use of them!
There are a host of recipes which I can try from the books but, perhaps more importantly, I can draw inspiration from them too.
This is how I tend to use cookbooks: not by following the recipe verbatim but by amending the recipe to suit myself – what I like and what I have in stock in the cupboards. I allow a flick through the recipes to inspire me to action and pull together a truly exciting dish. Sometimes this ends in failure, but often I impress myself – and anyone else I am cooking for – with a surprisingly spectacular meal.
What I am now setting out to do is read through some of these cookbooks and find appealing recipes I can cook. I’d be surprised if I don’t find a whole lot of things for me to eat. The only thing really holding me back is my own laziness to not only prepare the meal but go out and buy the ingredients! I’ll follow up in a couple of months with how it is going in my quest for exciting breakfast and lunch food!
What do you eat for breakfast and lunch typically? How do you add variety to your meals? Let me know in the comments below or on my Facebook page!
