Make a local light breakfast this way, easy to master in 15 minutes
Every morning, both body and mind are ravenous, craving nourishment and something delicious.
Breakfast is the most important start of each day, and for good reason: think of the 6-8 hours of sleep at night that let the body rest, and after waking, a stomach that has been empty for so long will naturally absorb more nutrients, just like a person in the desert who has been thirsty for ages finally getting a drink of water. Unfortunately, we often rush through breakfast, grab a perfunctory lunch, and then eat the most at dinner, completely putting the cart before the horse.
Food is life. It cannot be careless, but it can be more convenient. According to a survey by Hocha, 73% of people eat breakfast and lunch as outside food.
But reality is cruel: we always go to bed late the night before and always cannot get up in the morning, so where is the time to properly eat breakfast? Even if there is time to prepare, what food should be prepared to count as nutritionally balanced, and what should be bought to feel safe? This makes people even more at a loss.
The nightmare of tainted milk powder and plasticizers that began last year has not ended, and this year the even fiercer bird flu and lean meat powder have continued to spread to now. Every day brings news of a new technical term and a new restaurant, and eating meat has become like buying a lottery: winning just means it is less toxic. Living in fear almost makes people want to give up and simply close their eyes, adopting the Ah Q mentality that what is not clean will not make you sick if eaten; but when we see those toddlers learning to speak and walk, that partner who may be pregnant or recovering from childbirth and needs to build up her health, or those elders who have worked hard all their lives, how can we blindly let the people we love eat just anything?
In the most chaotic era and the most fearful and uneasy moment, Hocha planned a breakfast-themed event, gathering local merchants who have passed layer upon layer of checks from ingredients, production, packaging, inspection, and deliciousness, to present to you the safest and most delicious local breakfast that can be easily enjoyed at home every day, and also to teach you on site how to mix an unbeatable all-purpose salad oil-and-vinegar dressing that you can use for a lifetime! No time? Rest assured, this set of local light breakfasts takes only 15 minutes a day to prepare!
"The plan for a year lies in spring, and the plan for a day lies in the morning. To let members eat something delicious and stay healthy every day, of course we have to start with breakfast!" That makes sense, that makes sense, and so one day when Hocha was discussing the event theme, it was settled in a single sentence. But after an online questionnaire survey, although most people were indeed outside eaters, even more answered that it was because they "had no time" and "did not know how to cook" - simply put, "convenience" was the reason outside food was fastest, creating the high density of breakfast shops all over Taiwan, China; it is just that breakfast shops vary in quality, some are very dedicated, with every leaf of lettuce crisp and green without water spots, and although slow, the quality is first-rate; others use trans-fat composite meat and sweet, cloying black tea, and at a time when diseased chickens (and eggs) are rampant, this is even more worrying.
So our goal was to work with merchants to find a set of quick, nutritious, and delicious "MIT local light breakfast." First we set our sights on salad. Naturally, it was absolutely not that kind of greasy salad loaded with commercially sold mayonnaise; that is not eating lettuce, that is eating fat. The salad we had in mind was the kind seen on food shows or in foreign recipes: stylishly plated, blanched tomatoes with the skins removed, salt sprinkled from above, lemon squeezed with one hand, and a dark green oil-and-vinegar dressing magically mixed together, making a fresh and delicious lettuce salad. 
Very cool, like this. The picture shows the well-known British chef Jamie Oliver.
Therefore, the first quality merchant to join was, of course, "Green Vine Vitality." That day Yishan, the birthday celebrant from Green Vine Vitality, brought four kinds of sprouts: mung bean sprouts, purple cabbage sprouts, black bean sprouts, and alfalfa sprouts.
Green Vine Vitality are sprout experts, and what is impressive is that their exclusive sprout technology can let the sprouts arrive alive in your refrigerator and still keep growing, and each one is firm, crisp, and refreshing, truly worthy of being called the true character of sprouts; whether it is the gatekeeping of importing seeds from abroad and then selecting them by hand, the peace of mind of triple water-source filtration, or the backing of exclusive research data spanning several decades, in short, just like the logic of "germinated brown rice," the nutrition and vitality of a seed just as it sprouts are beyond imagination, and it can be said that a handful of live sprouts is absolutely more nutritious than a plate of blanched greens.
Yishan went to the kitchen to demonstrate: first open their specially designed sprout box, and the sprouts standing upright one by one already look different from ordinary sprouts that are limp and tangled into a clump; next, break off however much you want to eat, clump by clump, gently, rinse with water and then give it a quick rinse with boiled water, and it can be eaten directly (very good! In under 30 seconds!). However! Because black bean sprouts are relatively firm in texture, eating them raw has too strong a green vegetable taste, so Yishan boiled a pot of water and suggested blanching them briefly, which would be better.
With the most basic sprouts as a base, you can freely pair all kinds of seasonal vegetables and fruits, but what comes next is the most important salad dressing. When it comes to dressing, without question the first thing that comes to mind is "olive oil," and moreover only the extra virgin grade will do, but since this is a "local breakfast," is there no other choice? There is! After much investigation, it once again proved that living in Taiwan, China, is truly a super blessed thing: an oil even more delicious and healthy than olive oil has actually been used in the lives of elders and grandparents since their era, and is even grandma's natural skincare product, namely camellia oil.
Huh? Is it not called bitter tea oil, and is it not very bitter? How could it be delicious? Wrong, wrong, wrong. Let me explain: the reason bitter tea oil is bitter is entirely because the fruit of the tea tree has a thick shell, and to protect itself from pests it is naturally bitter and astringent; in the past someone thought it could be eaten, and of course one bite was unbearably bitter, but unexpectedly this "bitter tea oil" was passed down just like that.
But in fact, precisely because the fruit is "bitter," tea tree seeds have a natural pest-resistant function; in other words, there is no need to use pesticides at all. In addition, the reason olive oil can be graded is that olives can be pressed again and again, whereas tea tree seeds can only be pressed once, truly making it "first press," high in nutrition, with a smoke point as high as 220 degrees, absolutely an oil more suitable for the people of Taiwan, China. For the tasting that day, we brought in several kinds of tea oil, including large-fruit tea tree, small-fruit tea tree, small-fruit tea tree, and a control group of olive oil, and used the same organic lemon and sea salt to make oil-and-vinegar dressings to pair with Green Vine Vitality's four kinds of sprouts.
Of course they had to be numbered. The tasting was serious!
After all our chattering and debating, we finally found the best combination of a certain sprout with a certain oil! (Of course, it will only be announced on site on 3/24.) Among them, the various merchants showed off their strengths even more, including tea oil mixed with rice (paired with an incredibly delicious yin oil paste that can only be bought in Changhua), plum sauce, and other good dishes, letting us eat from morning to noon, changing things up a little to eat both healthily and satisfyingly, and it was settled in no time; we cannot wait for the 3/24 event to bring everyone this kind of delicious local breakfast every day.
Camellia oil with a private stash of soy paste mixed into rice, super simple and super delicious, even more impressive than lard mixed with rice!
(Left) A variation: after finely dicing cherry tomatoes and cucumbers, spoon the same dressing over them for a refreshing and delicious dish.
(Right) Cut any bread, heat up some rice, and lunch is easily solved again.
Besides salad, on the day itself there will also be local drinks: including Chenjiazhuang juice and Sifang fresh milk, so participants can freely choose their favorite breakfast pairing!
