This is a post about breakfast bowls. Sweet ones, savoury ones, hot ones, cold ones. All da delicious bowls in my morning life.

For me, my go-to breakfast is cereal with non-dairy milk. I don’t know exactly why I love cereal so much; Chew can’t fully explain her addiction for it either. Earlier this week we came back from a strenuous hike super hungry, and all we wanted was cereal for a very late lunch (like 3:30pm late). So we armed ourselves with 4 litres of soymilk, fresh fruit, and around 6 different types of cereal and had ourselves a fabulous cereal feast.

Even though 99% of the time I’ll choose to have something sweet for breakfast, I do have a soft spot for savoury breakfast dishes too. On one brunch occasion earlier this month, I ordered a “Little Veggie Bowl” at the brand new, super cozy Jam Cafe in Vancouver. I’ve heard about how large their normal bowls are and was glad to see a smaller one offered. When it came, I can surely tell you it was still massive. I ate and ate and ate from it for an entire hour and only managed to finish half, which kept me full for the rest of the day. Ya’ll should know I have a big appetite, especially if it’s 1) brunch and 2) the first meal of the day and it’s already noon. It was a dang good breakfast bowl of hashbrowns, housemade biscuits and mushroom gravy, and sauteed veggies, so I took the other half was packed to-go. It was as heavy as a brick. Meaning, I just ate a brick for breakfast.

When I’m on vacation, I try and deviate from my usual routine. After all, it’s supposed to be a ‘get-away’. I was lucky enough to be whisked away to Maui for a week with my family this month. Besides the crystal clear ocean, green sea turtles, and constantly sunny weather, I was looking forward to having acai bowls for breakfast. Smoothies are much more exciting when served in a 32 ounce bowl with toppings. I quickly discovered that I prefer pitaya (dragon fruit) bowls over acai, mainly because the colour is bright pink and it cannot be found where I live. My favourite spot for smoothie bowls on the island is Wow Wow Lemonade (their lemonades are phenomenal too!) I loved their pitaya bowl so much I begged my dad to drive us back to Kihei right before our flight to get one last bowl. Unfortunately I forgot they closed at 4pm and we arrived 20 minutes past 4. I cry, and now always think about their smoothie bowls.

For those that live in the Pacific Northwest like us, exotic tropical fruit can be pretty expensive. I am able to find white fleshed dragon fruit, but that doesn’t give the same wow factor as the pink kind in smoothies. Fortunately, in the summer, when cravings for smoothie bowls are at their peak, we have a bountiful supply and selection of berries. Blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries… we have them all in BC! It’s much more economical to eat locally; we pick our own berries every summer and freeze tons to use throughout the year. This BC berries breakfast bowl celebrates the fine berries we grow in this province and fills the void of acai bowls in my daily life.