A Better Breakfast with Willi Galloway’s Veggie-Forward Recipes

One morning last summer, I looked at my breakfast plate of toast and eggs and found it lacking. I knew I should be eating vegetables, but how and what kind? I ended up adding a small pile of carrot and celery sticks. They were vegetables, yes, but underwhelming and a little sad.

Enter Willi Galloway.

Galloway may be familiar to Seattleites from her time as the edible gardening expert on KUOW’s Greendays radio show. She is author of the 2012 cookbook Grow Cook Eat, which connected backyard garden beds to the kitchen via inspiring recipes and planting wisdom. Galloway’s garden knowledge comes from years serving in Master Gardener programs and as West Coast editor for Organic Gardening magazine.

And now, inspired by her garden, she’s specializing in veggies for breakfast, the title of her new book (officially it’s Veggies for Breakfast: 100 Delicious Plant Focused Recipes for Healthier Mornings.)

As I had, one day Galloway looked at her breakfast plate and wondered if she could do better.

“I have a garden right outside my kitchen door,” she explains, “and I was just eating toast and eggs every single day — even though I had so many vegetables outside.”

It was also a general effort to increase her vegetable consumption. “If I’m supposed to eat seven servings of fruit and vegetables a day,” Galloway said, “and I am only having vegetables at lunch and dinner, I’m not going to make it.”

Adding vegetables to your day

She started branching out — first into breakfast tacos, filling them with sautéed vegetables, chopped tomatoes, and avocado. Oatmeal turned savory, flavored with ginger and miso, or a cheesy version inspired by the Italian pasta dish cacio e pepe. Galloway tops grain bowls with chunks of roasted zucchini, eggplant, and peppers. Winter mornings might start with spicy black beans and kale over quinoa and eggs with chipotle hot sauce. Leftovers also played their part — topped with a poached or fried egg.

“If you want to turn something into breakfast,” the now-Portland resident advises, “just put an egg on it!”

Galloway may be extending the idea of what some people consider breakfast, branching out in savory and salad-y directions, but she’s doing it deliciously.

The biggest challenge, she found, was not revisioning breakfast but finding the time.

“Morning is not the time to chop a whole bunch of vegetables,” she said. “One of my favorite recipes in the book is The Morning Glory Oatmeal. You can’t make that on Monday morning when you have to leave by 7:45, but you can make it on Sunday and eat it for four days. So, to eat vegetables for breakfast does take a little bit of planning.”

Work ahead to eat more veggies

One of her most valuable lessons was planning and prepping vegetables in advance.

“I make what I call salad bar boxes,” she explains. “I’ll chop up vegetables that store well — snap peas, carrots, peppers, green onions, fennel, that type of stuff. Then it’s a grab and go situation. I can make ricotta toast and just put some vegetables on top, or make a breakfast salad. When everything’s already chopped, that makes it doable in the morning.”

There is also some pre-cooking involved — roasting vegetables ahead of the time or baking eggs. “These are things you can then utilize throughout the week,” she says.

Galloway originally wanted to stay away from smoothies, since that’s many people’s first instinct when looking for breakfast veggies. But she realized they had their place. “You can make them ahead at night, shake them up in the morning, keep them in the fridge, and they are good when you need something fast on the go.”

She did add innovations. Her Pumpkin Pie Smoothie features three different vegetables, for instance, with frozen cauliflower standing in for the ice used in many smoothie recipes – adding effortless nutrition and checking off another one of those recommended seven-a-day.

Galloway also veggie-fied overnight oats, adding carrots and a pepita crunch.

As an avid gardener, she knows how to add a seasonal bent to the produce bin. The Sweet Potato, Kale, and Smoked Salmon Hash (another Galloway favorite), or Curried Tomatoes with Paneer and Eggs will warm up a winter morning, but spring makes way for a lemony couscous bowl with snap peas, radishes, asparagus, and whipped feta cheese with herbs. There is also a springtime frittata of asparagus, potatoes, and dill — cooked on a sheet pan, a method that reduces cooking time and produces more consistent results.

It’s good to see there are ways to break the nutritional rut of the breakfast table, with creative options like adding sweet potatoes to waffles (gluten-free, cinnamon-orange flavored.)

Along with centering vegetables, Galloway has elevated the role of breakfast — a meal we’re told is the most important of the day but is often given little thought and even less time.

“I just think taking a beat in the morning to start your day out nice with something that is nourishing and delicious is not super valued in our society, which is really go, go, go,” Galloway explains.

“But eating a wider range of foods is eye opening and kind of fun.” She hopes to inspire people “ to just play a little bit faster and looser” — and nutritionally — with what they think constitutes breakfast.

Tara Austen Weaver is a Seattle-based writer, editor, and tender of an increasingly wild garden. She is author of numerous books, most recently How to Grow Berries and Fruit Trees in the Pacific Northwest and the Little Book of Flowers series: Peonies, Dahlias, and Tulips.