Veggies for Breakfast

Introduction

I love vegetables.

Growing, cooking, and eating vegetables happily takes up a large part of my life. Being a vegetable gardener naturally translates into being a vegetable lover. But a few years ago, I found that the morning crunch time of getting ready for my day did not lend itself to preparing vegetables for breakfast, even though I had a garden full of vegetables right outside my kitchen door. More and more I found myself making the exact same thing every single morning: toast and an egg. I ate this meal semi-religiously not because it’s my favorite thing to eat when I wake up or because it made me feel amazing. No, this was my go-to breakfast because it was easy.

Once I understood that convenience often outweighed nutrition at our morning table, I realized that I needed to make a road map for eating more vegetables at breakfast—both on busy weekday mornings and on weekends when I have more time. Like most parts of being a grown-up, it turns out that having a plan makes life better. The strategy I landed on is pretty straightforward: I plan out what I want to eat for the week, then I set aside time on the weekend to pre-chop some vegetables so that they are ready to grab and go. I cook a batch of versatile vegetables that can be used in a variety of recipes, and when in doubt, I make avocado toast.

Veggies for Breakfast grew out of my own kitchen and a desire to eat a more plant-forward diet all day. To address the biggest hang-up facing most breakfast cooks—time—many of the recipes feature make-ahead components that can be assembled and reheated quickly in the morning to help take the stress out of cooking breakfast. Additionally, the recipes are intentionally flexible. Many offer lots of options that give you permission to riff on the ingredients and take advantage of seasonal vegetables or what you have on hand.

I want this book to encourage you to use what you have in your fridge or garden, learn to think about using leftovers at breakfast, and familiarize yourself with suitable substitutions for when you are cooking on the fly. To help give you the confidence to start mixing and matching, you’ll find lots of flexible recipes that work well in a variety of situations. And whenever a recipe has a component that can be prepared in advance, you’ll see a Make-Ahead Mornings note with prep instructions.

The adaptable recipes were also developed to give you the confidence to add, subtract, or swap out ingredients so a particular dish meets your dietary preferences. Follow a gluten-free diet? Swap in an almond flour tortilla for a regular flour one. Don’t eat dairy? Skip the cheese garnish, or substitute a non-dairy alternative. The adjustable, versatile nature of the recipes makes it simple for you to use the vegetables you have on hand to create delicious, nutritious, veggie-filled breakfasts that meet the needs of yourself and the people you love to cook for.