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Fall and Winter Breakfasts plus Musings about Noise

It's officially fall now and, like a seasonal clock, my body goes from loving my breakfast smoothies to wanting something warmer, and from salads for lunches and dinners to cozy soups. It turns on a dime, too, like on a Tuesday in early fall, I will have a smoothie for breakfast and a salad for dinner and love it and on Wednesday I find that I can't look a cold smoothie in the face and salads seem unduly harsh. So, my feeling is that everyone is like me and wants different things for different seasons. Here are a couple of breakfast ideas for fall and winter.

I love buckwheat. I love the earthy texture, the strong, complicated taste, and I love the fact that it's G-free and also doesn't spike your insulin like, say oatmeal might. But I always wondered why. What does buckwheat have in it that keeps its glycemic index low and the insulin from spiking? For one thing, buckwheat is not a grain but a fruit seed related to rhubarb and sorrel and this faux-grain has a healthy sugar in it called d-fagomine which blunts the blood sugar spike and doesn't stimulate the secretion of insulin. Not only that, buckwheat appears to reduce the pathogenic bacteria in the gut. (Brit Jour Nut, 2011).

I can recommend Bob's Red Mill creamy buckwheat hot cereal. Add some fresh fruit or even blueberry compote on top. Dump some frozen blueberries into a saucepan with some xylitol and a touch of ginger and simmer slowly until sort of syrupy and jam-my. Jar it and keep in fridge. You might want to add some ground hemp, chia or flax seeds to the top of your hot cereal too, just for the added protein.

Cover your cereal with homemade almond milk: 1 C raw organic almonds soaked overnight. Add your soaked almonds to 1 qt. water then add 1 package of Nu-Naturals stevia and vanilla to taste. Blend like crazy, strain it, chill it and it's ready to go. You will notice that most store-bought nut milks have something called carrageenan in it: In labs, this additive is used to spur the growth of cancer cells in petri dishes. Carrageenan is also in most commercial salad dressings and heavy cream. It adds a smoothness and whippability to things. I try to avoid it.

Here's another good buckwheat recipe. It's not particularly warming, but very good for travelling since you can pack the ingredients and take your breakfast with you. It's especially good when you encounter those gross complimentary breakfasts that most motels/hotels offer - the buffet table groaning with sweet rolls, Frosted Flakes and the huge Cost Co-like muffins. As you look at the sugary buffet table, your heart sinks but your mouth waters at your remembered addiction to sugary stuff. You are like the alcoholic looking at the lovely white and amber bottles in back of the bar and you are suddenly thrown back into your sugar addiction. But you know that you can't eat anything on the table, because if you do, by 10 AM you will be rendered comatose and/or mentally unstable with hypoglycemia and you will want  no, need - a sugary Starbucks Salted Caramel Latte. And so you fight with yourself.

But, please, before you blow the Frosted Flakes to smithereens with the .38 you keep in your purse for protection from the loony tunes and the terrorists who seem to be everywhere, try this: Put 2 T. buckwheat  the brown, roasted kind - along with 1 T. seeds of your choice (pumpkin or sunflower), scant T. of walnuts or almonds and 1T. dried fruit of your choice (raisins, sour cherries, craisins etc.) into a bowl. Cover with milk or nut milk or even water if that is all you have. Cover the bowl and put it in your hotel room fridge overnight. The next morning, it will be ready to eat as is, no cooking. Take your little container to one of the plastic tables surrounding the buffet table, get a carton of milk (or maybe they are progressive and have an offering of nut milk) to pour over your cereal and add some fruit if they offer it. You may now gloat over your health.

Another favorite cereal is Millet-Amaranth, again G-free and higher in protein. You can buy both of these grains in bulk or in packages from Bob's Red Mill. You put ½ C. millet and ½ C. amaranth into 2C. boiling water, stir it a bit, then turn down the heat and simmer covered until it's cereal-like, maybe 15 minutes. Add all your topping goodies and eat. It's very earthy in flavor, and I think you will like it.

Sound and Fury: I am so glad I live in peace and quiet in the foothills above Boulder. Although no one would consider Boulder to be a frantic metropolis, it nonetheless does have the ever-present background noise of cars, ambient conversations, electrical hums and oh, yes, the 30,000-strong C.U. students doing their noisy student thing. After a day in the hell-hole of my Boulder office (just kidding), I drive 12 miles straight up hill and enter the healing and woodsy silence of my 4 acre property at an elevation of 8,300 feet. I come home to the kind of absolute silence where you can hear your heart beating, your ears ringing and the angels singing.

You already know that noise is bad for you. But did you know that the word noise comes from the Latin word for nausea? Did you know that noise is considered a pervasive health problem and a major cause of heart disease, impaired task performance, insomnia and hearing loss? We live in a world of uncontrolled and uncontrollable cacophony, of sound and fury. What can you do?

Best of all, try to find a very quiet place to live just so you will at least have the solace of knowing that there will be the eventual escape from the noise that you can't control. If you can't, then try to control your environment. Get really good ear plugs  the kind that cost money and really fit your ears - obtained from an audiologist. Best investment I have ever made and they are going strong after 15 years. There is also a cheaper earplug called Hearos which will muffle sound when you are out in a noisy restaurant or in blow dryer hell at the hairdresser. Miraculously you can still hear enough to have a reasonable conversation. But, since I am old dog, it's easy for me to recommend that it's best not to frequent noisy bars or concerts. Just so you have some idea: A 12 gauge shotgun is about 165 decibels  I don't know from dB's either, but 165 sounds like it's REALLY LOUD - while a rock concert is 112, a leaf blower is 105 and a chain saw is 100. A "whisper quiet library" is 60 dBs so my house must be 0 dBs until the dog barks at the UPS man and the decibels go right up there to 165.

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