Surprising Food Discovery!

I made a surprising food discovery this morning. I’m not a big breakfast eater – except on the weekends – and to make things worse, I don’t often leave a lot of time during weekday mornings to eat breakfast. In the past, toast or a bagel, or a heaping* bowl of Count Chocula would suffice, but once I switched my diet around and reduced my carbohydrate intake a few months ago those options flew out the window faster than Post could change the name of Super Sugar Crisp cereal to Super Golden Crisp cereal.

I didn’t want to skip breakfast so I started eating egg whites. There’s not much in the food world that’s more boring than egg whites. Plus I didn’t like taking the time in the morning to cook them. I started cooking them the night before and I quickly discovered that there is one thing more boring than egg whites and that’s cold egg whites. Finally I discovered fat-free cottage cheese. On the plus side the stuff is low in calories, it has no fat, it’s filling and it’s got a ton of protein (one cup has 28 grams). On the negative side it’s got too much sodium and it’s got additives and it uses artificial coloring and I have a tendency toward being lactose intolerant. Well, there comes a time in a person’s life when he has to throw the dice and take a gamble. In other words, he has to “man up” so I started eating cottage cheese for breakfast (with the thought that I’ll just do it until I find something better and as convenient) and I’ve dealt with the stomach gurgles and (the sometimes more than) occasional toots (In all honesty, and in the interest of full disclosure, I’m really tempted to take that side effect out of the negative column and move it over to the positive column). I was happy until it dawned on me that fat-free cottage cheese is just about as bland as egg whites.

Simple solution: I started adding pepper to the stuff.

Not bad. For a while.

A couple of work weeks in and I’m juggling cold egg whites and fat-free cottage cheese and all I really want is to just want to sit down to a box of Count Chocula. Or Cap’n Crunch (stays crunchy, even in milk. I don’t drink milk but it stays sort of crunchy in water, too). I wanted something tasty and fast and rewarding; I was, sadly, becoming cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. And then this morning it happened.

Eureka!

I open up that big tub of cottage cheese and go for my pepper grinder and it’s the mother of all tragedies: I’m out of pepper. Feeling a little panicky I look in the cupboard for something to sprinkle onto those tasteless curds and I find a bottle of garlic pepper. Hmmm. Garlic. What could be bad? It’d be like garlic cheese bread without the bread, right? I sprinkle it on and it’s good. Seriously, it’s out of this world good. I’m talking Out. Of. This. World. Good.

So I’m back in the game. Sorry, Count. My apologies, Cap’n. See ‘ya later, Sugar Bear. It’s me and my garlic-pepper cottage cheese and we’re moving on.

Since you’ve been kind enough to read this far I thought it’d only be fair of me to share my recipe with you so here goes…

Fat-Free Cottage Cheese with Garlic Pepper

Step 1: One serving of fat-free cottage cheese. I like Old Home but you can substitute any brand you want.

Click to enlarge

 Step 2: Add garlic pepper to taste.  

Click to enlarge. Scratch monitor to activate WordPress’ Smellovision feature.

 Step 3: Stir cottage cheese and seasoning to mix ingredients and then wait about two minutes while the spices blend into the cottage cheese. Eat & enjoy. 

*: Half a box