This recipe is specifically for my brother, but it may be applicable to you if lately you've been finding yourself staring at the plate of food in front of you that's called "breakfast" but could be called "borefest". You see, my brother is the kind of guy who can taste something at a restaurant (in particular, Chinese restaurants) and go back home and replicate it EXACTLY down to the number of pinches of star anise it takes to make it taste authentic. (Oh yeah. Anal retentiveness runs in this family.) He's the kind of guy who, when you say you're coming over to hang out, will go shop for enough food for 20 hungry mechanics, and slave over a hot stove so you'll have something to eat when you arrive to, you know, just hang out. It's not so much that you're guilted into eating what he whipped up, it's that his cooking is sooo good that sometimes we get to thinking, "Can we just cancel dinner plans with so-and-so tonight, because I'd rather eat this than the crappy Italian we're going to have." My sister-in-law has said she's lucky to have married my brother because when she gets home from work, she's the one who gets to say, "Honey, what's for dinner?" Anyway, my dear brother fixes planes for a living; I think he missed his calling somewhere along the line, don't you?

So it came as a surprise one day when we were IM'ing each other that he requested that I put recipes on the blog.

Moi? (podunk)

I wondered aloud why he would request that, because I'm known officially in the family as the Expert Eater (he being the Expert Cook, whereas my sister's the Expert Shopper... but that's another story altogether). My idea of cooking is asking Frank to cook rice (dump rice in pot, add water, turn on rice cooker) while I chop random vegetables and fry them up in a pan with a bit of sauce from a jar. "What's so special about my cooking?", I typed furiously. And he replied that there were certain things I'd made in the past that he and Ann liked, like the Gurkensalat (a cucumber and yogurt salad from a German recipe that I passed off as, ahem, mine), the Green Beans and Tofu (a lucky accident), the Chicken and Leeks (Frank's recipe, actually), among others. He also said that he liked our healthy eating habits and since Ann was on a restricted salt/sugar/fats diet, our recipes would come in handy. (Hey, compliment! My brother must have been desperate.)

Anyway, going back to breakfast. I have never been a fan of cold breakfasts. I'm Asian through and through, and nothing says breakfast more than rice with last night's leftovers. Later on I switched to toasted waffles with Bonne Maman jam or some chocolate spread, and a Morning Star breakfast patty. (Frank? Cereal. For as long as I've known my husband, he's eaten cereal every morning. For seven years. The mind boggles.) Ever since we moved to Germany it's been hard to get a good breakfast by my standards. One, Frank likes to eat my rice and Random Vegetable Stir Fry dinners, which means there are no leftovers for a good Asian breakfast. (I don't eat much eggs, and longanisa is way hard to come by. Not that I'm all for the porky goodness.) Two, waffles, not the waffles any average American is familiar with, but the waffles German stores carry, are about three inches square, one inch high, weigh 1 kilo and carry 300 calories. Each. The Germans like their waffles hearty. Three, soy breakfast patties? In Germany? As rare as the spotted Bavarian elephant. Trust me, I looked everywhere.

So here I was, feeling sorry for myself that I had to eat heavy German bread with chocolate spread and, occasionally, the Trader Joe's Roasted Soybean Butter that my family would send in care packages once in a while. I ate this for eight months—eight months!—and was resigned to a boring breakfast for the rest of our lives until we arrived in Geyikbayiri in mid-January. The following day we walked to the camp restaurant for breakfast and, on impulse, I ordered the müsli. When it came, it was so gloriously beautiful I took the picture above: a mound of cereal, fruit, and yogurt in a small earthenware bowl, with honey to drizzle over. I added a bit of milk and stirred everything together into a white mush, and took my first spoonful.

It was love at first bite.

Oh, sweet love. It was oh so good.

From that day forward I had the müsli for breakfast; sometimes it was bread with various spreads, but I always had the müsli at least 3 times a week. That a cold breakfast could be so orgamiscally tasty was a huge revelation for me, and I'm sharing it with you, big brother o' mine, and anyone else who's interested. It's a bit labor-intensive, all the slicing and dicing of various fruit, but if you make enough for 2-3 days at a time, it's well worth it. I always griped about the price, 3.50 Euros ($5.21, yo) but then at home it took me an hour and at my going freelance rate, it was a bargain. It's a simple recipe, and you'll wonder why it ever needed directions—I mean, fruit and grains in a bowl, right—but if you're like me, domestically-handicapped, you need a recipe. Make it like this and you'll never look back.

We like organic ingredients; fat-free and non-dairy products.

Müsli with Fruit (Serves 2 people for 2 breakfasts)

Müsli, the plain kind
1 orange (preferably all organic fruit)
1 apple
1 banana
1 kiwi
1/2 pomegranate
Yogurt (we use 0.1%, preferably soy)
Honey (we like Acacia flower-flavored)
Soy milk

Prepare the fruit. Cut away the peel of the orange, cut out each section, and cut each section into halves or thirds. Put in a bowl and squeeze the sectioned orange "corpse" to get all the juice. Dice the apple (don't peel it; peel is good for ya, if it's organic) into cubes the same size as the orange pieces. Peel banana, quarter it lengthwise, and slice into small pieces. Cut away kiwi skin and dice the kiwi. Halve the pomegranate half. Either tap out the seeds with a wooden spoon or do what I did, Miss Freelance Designer at $XXX/hour, which is scoop out each and every seed with your fingers. Whichever way works. Toss all the fruit together. The citric acid in the orange juice prevents the apple and banana from turning brown, so the fruit salad keeps for 2-3 days.

Take out two bowls. In each bowl, put in half a cup of müsli, add as much fruit salad as you like. Top with a spoonful or two of yogurt. Drizzle with honey and add however much milk you prefer.

Enjoy!

Note: You can use any fruit that's relatively dry and not too juicy, unless you want fruit soup!