By Sara Halickman

Anyone who knows me knows I love to eat and cook (also a reason why anyone who knows me also knows that I am a very regular gym-goer). I’ve always been an adventurous eater thanks to a pact my parents made with me at the age of three when I swore I would try everything once and only once I had could I decide what I did and didn’t like. I have to say it worked; there are very few foods I turn my nose at.

Lately I’ve become more and more aware of how important what I eat is during a workday; it dictates how tired I am, how productive I am, and how well I feel. There’s nothing worse than feeling sluggish after a big lunch and too tired to get anything done all afternoon, or being distracted by hunger and on a hunt for food (which generally doesn’t end well). I’ve found that it is incredibly important to eat properly for a workday to make sure I have enough energy.

I have always been a huge proponent of breakfast being the most important meal of the day. I can’t understand how people go through an entire morning without eating anything and somehow muster up the energy to get a morning’s worth of work in. I love breakfast. I have been one to admit that upon finishing dinner I start looking forward to the next morning’s breakfast. I’ve gone through a lot of breakfast phases, and the meals that stick tend to be ones that actually keep me full from breakfast until lunch .

A vegetarian friend of mine introduced me to a website devoted to vegan recipes over the summer and recommended something called Vegan Overnight Oats. I was intrigued. I’ve always been a fan of oatmeal in the morning and once I tried VOO (as the website’s creator affectionately calls them) I was immediately hooked. The recipe extremely filling and is one of the few breakfasts that can get me all the way through until lunch. It’s made with rolled oats, almond milk, chia seeds, and a variety of other ingredients that can be used to customize it to your tastes. The secret is in the chia seeds; they act as a binding agent and by some miracle of chemistry absorb the milk into the raw oats and make everything moist but not soggy.

You can find my personal favorite VOO recipe here; along with a number of others that are based along the same premise.

It is my current favorite breakfast to start a workday with, along with a nice cup of coffee. I usually prepare mine when I make my lunch the night before, which is not surprisingly when I start looking forward to eating it.