The Working Women's Guide to Breakfast

With as much joy we take in the planning and executing of dinners at our house, for me it is not the case with the weekday breakfast. Sure I really love steel cut oats on the weekend, and have been fatasizing for months about making this recipe from the Silver Spoon cookbook where you carve out tomatoes and roast them with olive oil and cook an egg inside the tomato, and snip some herbs on top at the end, but with weekdays it is so much more about finding the cheapest/healthiest/easiest way to not make my stomach noticeably growl during my 11am staff meeting. I get up at 6am, commute from Albany to the Berkshires, and am just lucky if I can get some combination of boots/tights/pencil skirt/sweater to look good together and have eyeliner in place, so forget about anything that takes any time or effort. I will mention that the best breakfast is leftover cold pizza (preferably from Lou-Bea's), but I know pizza is not an acceptable breakfast food and that is ridiculous.

So here are some options in order from least desirable to most desirable:

• Special K cereal bars First off, the fact that the main selling point for something is that it is only 90 calories doesn't say much. You know why these "100 calorie packs" are 100 calories? Because it's two Oreos. I once spent an hour trying to open a "50 calorie" pack of prunes to find that it literally had one prune in it. I spent more calories opening the thing. No thanks. Also none of the flavors were that good. I never tried the chocolate, because the only time I think I'd have chocolate for breakfast would be the day after Valentine's day and I have a huge heart-shaped box at my desk and can't help myself. The vanilla, blueberry, strawberry are ok. Just ok. One good thing about them is that you can leave them in your purse and they never actually break (although if you think about that isn't a selling point either). Overall, not tasty, doesn't fill you up, by the time you get to work you forgot you ate anything for breakfast. What's the point, eat a celery stick. 
• Special K shakes Since we are getting married in 3 and a half months and I want to make sure I don't gain weight and can fit in my dress, I had these for a few months. The magic thing about them is that they really fill you up. You have one of these you are not hungry the entire day all for 180 calories. Are they tasty? No, but chilled you can get through it. Are they cheap? No, $7 for 4 seems like a lot. Do you actually lose weight? Maybe a little but go back to real food, and you'll go to the same weight you were. Also, try them for a while and you will dread them, and do anything for real food. Also, I had such skin problems when I was consuming these. I don't usually do, but no matter how much I scrubbed my skin I broke out. Stopped drinking them and problem solved. Overall, definitely puts off the feeling of hunger for hours on end, but destroys your skin, are expensive, and after a while are just disgusting. You grow to dread them.
• Nutri-grain bars. Complete mediocrity. Not bad, not tasty, not expensive, not unhealthy. This is what I am having for breakfast now. Not impressed, not repulsed. 
• Rock Hill Bakehouse bread. It is sold at most Capital Region Hannafords and some Price Choppers. Full flavor inside, with a real crust. Sourdough is my personal favorite.
• Bella Napoli Bread. They have locations in Latham and Troy. By far, my favorite bakery in the area so far. Fluffy, crusty, delicious. Give me a hunk of their bread for breakfast any day!