BREAKFAST

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. There is no need to provide ham, bacon, eggs, and home fries, with warm toast dripping butter, on a daily basis.

Start the day with a good breakfast, supplying protein and energy foods. It is a good opportunity to get some of your calcium allowance in the form of milk, yogurt, or cheese. This is especially important for young children, whose bones and teeth are developing, teenagers, usually going through spurts in growth that require extra nutrients, and women, who are more at risk from osteoporosis. Dairy foods are the biggest single source of dietary calcium. They provide also protein and other important vitamins. Lower fat versions are preferable, and an equally useful source of these nutrients. Children as young as two can benefit from 2% fat milk.

For a week day breakfast, you might like to find some simple wholesome alternatives to cold cereal or a bagel –or a quick something grabbed on the go. Although most breakfast options can be prepared in less than thirty minutes, there are ways to speed up the process even more.

• Muffins can be made in advance and frozen.
• Have pre grilled bread slices frozen, ready to pop in the toaster.
• Pancake mix can be prepared the night before and stored in the fridge; this way you can make pancakes in a hurry.

Muesli or a granola breakfast, fresh fruit with yogurt, fresh fruit smoothie, or a quick omelet provide an excellent start to the day. It takes less than five minutes to put it together. If you have to go for the cold cereal with milk, make it whole grain and add berries or raisins.

There is still room for a breakfast sandwich on busy day, where the next meal can be delayed, and for a traditional cooked breakfast on the weekend, even as a brunch option.

LIST OF WINTER FOODS

Make use of the wide range of root vegetables. It is time for baking and stewing.

VEGETABLES

BEST QUALITY: Jerusalem artichoke; white beans, lima beans; beetroot; broccoli; Brussels sprouts; cabbage; carrots; cauliflower; celeriac; celery; kale; leeks; lettuce; onions; parsnip; potatoes; sea kale; shallot; turnip; watercress. AVAILABLE: avocado; French beans; chicory; endive; fennel; kohlrabi; mushroom; okra; pepper; salsify; squashes; sweet potato; zucchini.

FRUIT

BEST QUALITY: apples; cranberries; pears; citrus fruits, such as grapefruits, lemons, limes, tangerines, clementines, satsumas, oranges, ugli; chestnuts, hazelnuts, and walnuts. AVAILABLE: bananas; coconut; dates; lychees; mangoes; persimmon; pineapple.

MEAT
Beef and pork roasts, chops, calf’s liver, buffalo. Before refrigeration, pork used to be eaten fresh only in the winter months. This was also the time to make sausages

POULTRY
Chicken, chicken livers – turkey – goose - Guinea fowl, though available through much of the year, is at its best from the second half of the winter.

GAME
Hare, wild rabbit, farm rabbit is available all the year, partridge, pheasant, wild duck and venison.

FISH

BEST QUALITY: cod, dogfish, flounder, haddock, hake, halibut, mock halibut, plaice, skate, sea bream, sole, whiting, as white fish; carp, herring, mackerel, grey mullet, perch, pike, pilchard, sprat, as oily fish. AVAILABLE: turbot as white fish; conger eel, rainbow trout as oily fish.

SEAFOOD

Clams, crab, lobster, prawns, shrimp.