I’m really winning with this breakfast stuff, aren’t I?
That’s because breakfast is my favourite meal, even when I don’t always have time for a proper breakfast every morning.

When we were kids my mom would cook a big breakfast on weekends.
This usually involved thick oatmeal with evaporated milk and omelette sandwiches or sardine sandwiches with tomatoes, onions and lettuce, or crepe-like pancakes and fruit salads, and the fanciest of all was a baked custard dish with cake.
We’d get the bread for our sandwiches early that morning from a bakery, whose owner was also a family friend.
We’d call the night before to request a special bread, and if the bakery was out of our special bread for whatever reason, we (usually my sister and I) would then go to a second bakery on Siaka Stevens Street, the bread wasn’t as good as Mila’s but it was far better than the one we usually got from the little kiosk down the street during the week.

Not everyone was a fan of my mom’s elaborate breakfasts; we were such picky eaters she usually had to force us to eat; I was afraid of sardines, my older brother hated eggs and anything with butter in it, my other brother didn’t like it when the bananas and oranges in his fruit salad touched; he’d throw tantrums when they did, and my sister just didn’t like eating, and my father throughout the meal would stare longingly at the clock.

This weekend as I prepared my own little feast I asked my mom about the production that was our Saturday mornings.
She said years before, when we lived in the middle of nowhere and could barely make ends meet, she promised herself that if we ever got out; her children would never go without breakfast again.
Thankfully, my Saturday morning breakfast rituals are a little less ambitious than my mom’s.
I think my aversion to elaborate breakfasts (especially ones I have to make) stems from that period of my life.

For oats and other grains, I usually let it cook overnight in a crock-pot, and I wake up to a quick healthy breakfast in the morning.
It’s even better when I have leftovers; I just heat it up in a bit of almond milk, add in a few slices of fresh strawberries and top with a healthy portion of peanuts for protein.

It’s a miracle!
I found strawberries in winter that didn’t cost a fortune – they look so good and taste pretty good too.