Homemade Breakfast for Yogis

Breakfast is considered the most important meal of the day. As you’ve slept through the night, breakfast will make sure that you’ll get that little kick in the morning to wake you up and start a productive day. Therefore I came up with a couple of ideas to make sure that you’ll get the best homemade breakfast that you’ll be getting. This is because everything is homemade and therefore a lot better than all the other processed things you’ll be getting.

I was inspired by this after my homemade teas. I live in a very remote area and it’s not always easy to get things like superfoods and other things. So I started talking to some people in my area and I found out that a lot of ingredients are actually around me. My neighbor, for example, has pomegranate trees, which give me that energy shot in the morning. And it’s considered a superfood as well.

Try to look around you in your are, if you’re not living in a city, of course, to see which types of ingredients you can harvest yourself and try to make something out of it. There are a lot of benefits to doing this. It’s better for the environment as you don’t have to drive to the supermarkets to buy products that are imported, they are very economical as well as you don’t have to spend any money on them, and best of all, mostly they are even organic as a lot of products are just being seen as a weed.

So let’s start with the first homemade part of your yogi breakfast!

Acorn Coffee

Besides our beloved friends Chip and Dale, acorns are used to be made into coffee as well by humans for ages already. This especially during times of war as imported goods were scarce and people had to come up with different solutions to get their favorite morning drink. Besides that, oak trees are growing in most European countries and the US, so in the fall it’s quite easy to find these little nuts.

The taste itself is a bit different than coffee, so for absolute coffee lovers, it might be a bit hard to get used to in the beginning. But if they’re prepared in a good way, they have more benefits and no side effects. While with coffee you’ll always have the caffeine in it, which isn’t that good.

I can’t even drink coffee as it makes me go wild! My heart starts beating fast, I start to sing the most ridiculous songs and people around me tend not to like me so much while I’m on coffee ;).

Benefits of Acorns

The benefits of the acorn are those of nuts in general. They have good fats in them, which is healthier than butter and otter kinds of oils. This is if they are eaten moderately and not with a bag full of course. And besides that, they are also high in protein.

Because of my IBS, I’m not processing beans at all, which made it very hard for me to sustain my vegetarian lifestyle. This made me switch my protein source from beans to nuts.

Another benefit of the acorn is that it’s full of vitamin E, which is beneficial for the detox of our body. Vitamin E has been seen as a great anti-oxidant and helps against the damage done to the cells by free radicals.

It must be said that even though these nuts are very beneficial and ecological as they can be found anywhere in the world, that it’s best not to overconsume them and to make sure that you prepare them well as they contain a lot of tannins as well. Therefore it’s best to consume just a few cups per day.

How to Make Acorn Coffee

The process of making acorn coffee isn’t that hard, but it takes quite some time as you have to roast them two times and boil them. That said, you don’t have to do it all at once, as you they hold very well and they won’t get wasted.

1. So the first step of making acorn coffee is to get yourself some acorns. This is quite a nice activity to do with your children on a nice autumn day. You go for a hike in the woods with a couple of bags and you get yourself some nuts! You just have to make sure that you get the acorns that don’t have a little hole in them because that means that there are maggots inside of the acorn. If you have small children, make sure that you double-check your nuts when you come back home.

2. When you’ve checked your acorns, make a small cut in them and put them into a pot filled with water. The small cut will make sure that it’s easier to peel the nuts after they are boiled.

3. Boil the nuts. This process you have to do to make sure to get the tannin out of them. During the process, you’ll see that the water will get brown and this means that you’ll have to repeat the process until the water is more or less clear-ish. The acorns that I always gather don’t have a lot of tannin in them, so I only have to boil them for 15 minutes. But this all depends on the types of oaks are available in your area.

4. Peel the nuts and but them on a baking tray, it’s best to use some baking paper as well to make sure that the nuts don’t stick to the tray as they’ll be getting oily and dry. While they are in the oven, make sure you stick a fork or spoon in the door to prevent it from closing down completely. This will make that the acorns dry out and get roasted.

5. There is not a set timing while doing this process, so you should stick around so they don’t get burnt. They are done when they have kind of a brownish roasted look and when they are dry. Make sure you turn them around now and then to make sure they are roasted evenly.

6. Take them out of the oven and now there are a couple of ways to grind them. You can use a mortar, a blender, a mixer, … just make sure that you’ve got something to make them as small as possible. It almost has to look like ground coffee. If you have a coffee grinder, this will be the most perfect method to use.

7. Put the grind back on the tray and put the tray inside again. This process will go rapidly as the pieces are a lot smaller now. Turn them around every couple of minutes to make sure they are roasted evenly. They are done when they have a black look.

8. Let them cool down and put them in a jar to preserve them.

9. Make some coffee with a filter or with a cafetiere to enjoy your homemade acorn coffee!

If you happen to live in an area where there are hazelnuts, make sure that you mix them with the acorns. This will give it a great nutty flavor as well. And the acorn coffee itself does taste kind of like regular coffee, however, if you are used to a big caffeine shot, you’ll have to mix some regular coffee with your mixture the first time. Just to make sure you’re not going into withdrawal from your daily doses of caffeine ;).

This is the first step in making our delicious homemade breakfast for yogis!

Granola

Another item that can’t be missed is some homemade granola. When you buy granola in the supermarket, chances are big that there are more ingredients in it that you don’t want. And besides that, it’s high in sugar as well. And as it’s not that hard to make your homemade granola recipe, you can easily do it yourself.

The granola made in supermarkets is mostly fried, so this means that they used a lot of oil to make sure it tastes good and that it is very crunchy. With this basic granola recipe, you don’t have to worry about not knowing how it’s been made as you’ll be adding all the ingredients yourself!

Ingredients

– Oat flakes

– Oil (which one you can choose yourself, just make sure that it’s a neutral one)

– Honey (optional)

– Other things to enrichen your recipe

Creating Your Granola

So, oat flakes and oil are the basics of your homemade recipe, besides that you can add whatever you’d like to the mix. Going from dried fruits to nuts. Just make sure that you’ll add your favorite ingredients to make sure that you’ll fully enjoy your homemade granola.

The honey you don’t have to add, but it sure makes that you get a sweeter touch to it, and as it caramelizes a bit in the oven, it will give an extra crunch as well. To make your granola, it’s very simple with the next steps:

– Cut the ingredients like the dried fruits and/or nuts in the desired size

– Add these to your oat flakes

– Add a bit of oil to your mixture, just so that it’s a bit glazy, but not completely soaked in oil.

– Put everything in an oven tray and put it in the oven on low heat (Around 140°C or 280°F)

– Leave it in the oven for about 20-30 minutes and make sure you toss it around to make sure it gets grilled evenly

– Get it out of the oven, let it cool down and put it in a jar to keep it fresh!

Yet another amazingly easy recipe to add to your homemade yogi breakfast, of course, you can’t eat this without yogurt or milk, so we’re going to close off with some homemade oat milk and almond milk. Another thing that is easy to make, and it even will cut your supermarket bill as oat milk and almond milk are quite expensive to buy. Not only that, but they also contain some added sugars that you might not be aware of.

Vegan Milk

Within the yogi lifestyle, a lot of people are switching from cow milk to vegan milk. I’m not vegan, so I try to switch off my normal cow milk with some other types of milk. Just to make sure that I’m getting the best of both worlds. Of course, if you are lactose intolerant, these vegan kinds of milk are a blessing.

Let’s start with the easiest one and the cheapest one as well, which is oat milk.

Homemade Oat Milk

The recipe for oat milk is ease. However, for those with gluten intolerance, they might not be able to enjoy this beverage, which is why coming next will be a recipe for almond milk. It’s a bit more expensive, but your intestines will love you if you’ve got an intolerance for the glutes!

But now, almond milk. What do you need? Easy: Water and rolled oats!

How to make it? As well, very simple:

– Put 4 cups of water in a blender

– Put 1 cup of rolled oats in a blender (put them together would be the best thing to do)

– Mix for about 40 seconds

– Strain the mixture into a cheesecloth to make sure all the pieces of oats are sieved

And that’s it! So, before you go buy your overly priced Oat milk, think about this recipe again and give it a go. This was a very basic recipe, but of course, you can add some flavors or other things if you’d like to give your milk an extra dimension. I always like to keep it very basic as this way it just fits with everything.

Homemade Almond Milk

This is our last recipe for today to finish off your homemade yogi breakfast! Almond milk is a bit more expensive than oat milk, however, it’s a great alternative for those with a gluten allergy. Also, almond milk itself is quite easy to make, you just need a bit more time to soak the almonds in water.

Here’s how to make it:

– Soak some almonds in cold water overnight. Or if you forgot about this step, make sure that you boil the almonds for a couple of hours.

– Put one cup of almonds in a blender

– Put four cups of water in a blender

– Blend

– Put it through a cheesecloth to strain, if it’s too thick you can add one more cup of water

– Done 😉

With this one, you can decide too if you’d like to add some other ingredients to add some other flavors. It’s also good to add a pinch of salt to almond milk to make sure the flavors are not that bland.

Conclusion

As you can see, it’s not that hard to create your homemade breakfast. And most of these recipes will keep for a week, the coffee even lasts forever, and the granola does last long as well. So, on a day off, and you’re bored, you can just make all these yourself and you can enjoy your breakfast for the rest of the week.

Also, like the coffee and the granola can be put into a box if you’d like to take it on your travels. I always feel that the world has been connecting over coffee and when you can’t drink coffee, I felt left out a couple of times already. Therefore, now you have coffee that you can take with you!

Do you have more recipes that are mixing well with these breakfast dishes? We would love to hear about them!

Nama-stay wonderful!