Eating a healthy breakfast can reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease, aid in weight loss, and improve memory and concentration.

For children, skipping breakfast has been associated with headaches, fatigue, restlessness, irritability and other problems.

We tend to forgo breakfast when we’re rushed or bored with the same old morning menu. But solving this quandary is easy: Be creative, stick to simple ingredients, and add a flavorful “wow factor.”

Our weekend recipe is a perfect example of delicious, easy-to-prepare breakfast fare. With only three ingredients, it’s a high-fiber antidote to no-time-for-breakfast excuses.

All of the ingredients should be readily available at your local natural and organic food store.

Mandarin Orange Cereal Bowl

Makes 1 serving

1. Place cereal in serving bowl. Top with mandarin orange segments and juice.
2. Top with yogurt.

Recipe courtesy of Post Classic Cereals

Visit a Vietnamese restaurant, and you’re likely to find chanh muối on the menu—a beverage that literally means “salty lemonade.” Chefs make the drink with pickled lemons or limes, and it can be served cold or hot.

Our weekend recipe comes from Dana Jacobi, author of The Essential Best Foods Cookbook: 225 Irresistible Recipes Featuring the Healthiest and Most Delicious Foods and a contributor to the New American Plate Cookbook: Recipes for a Healthy Weight and a Healthy Life. She substitutes freshly squeezed lemon juice for the pickled lemons, replaces sugar with agave syrup, and adds pinches of cayenne and black pepper to spice things up.

“Asians appreciate that [the peppers’] heat helps keep you cool, plus their flavors go well with the lemon,” she says. “If you find club soda more refreshing, by all means use it in place of water.”

Note: Use kosher salt in lieu of table or sea salt. It has “the cleanest taste of all salts; the minerals in sea salt affect its flavor, so every brand tastes slightly different,” Jacobi says.

All of the ingredients should be available at your local natural and organic food store.

Asian Lemonade

Recipe and photo courtesy of the American Institute for Cancer Research

We’ve had a rough time with Chinese exports over the last few years: melamine in pet food, drug residues in seafood, lead in children’s toys and poisonous chemicals in toothpaste.

But we can thank China and her neighbors for a beloved American fruit: the lemon, whose seeds were first introduced to us by Christopher Columbus. They were later planted by Catholic missionaries in Arizona and California, states that now produce 95% of the lemons we consume.

If you enjoy cooking, it’s hard to live without Citrus limon. The versatile fruit adds a pleasing pungency to teas and other beverages, fish and poultry entrees, vegetable dishes, salad dressings and marinades, and baked goods and other desserts. For future culinary reference: One medium lemon contains approximately 3 tablespoons of juice and 3 tablespoons of grated peel.

Available year-round, lemons have only 30 calories per 1/2 cup (sectioned and peeled). This serving size offers 90% of your daily vitamin C requirement and 3 g dietary fiber (about 10% of your daily requirement).

When choosing an organic lemon, look for a firm fruit with a bright yellow color. Pass on lemons that are soft, shriveled or have spots. A juicy lemon will feel heavy and have a thin skin. If the skin is green-tinged, expect a more acidic fruit.

I mix fresh lemon juice with water when I freeze ice cubes—a great way to add extra flavor to cold beverages. Before squeezing, roll a whole lemon along your kitchen countertop; this trick helps you produce more juice.

Lemons can be stored at room temperature for roughly 2 weeks. You may also refrigerate them for up to 6 weeks.

Tune in tomorrow for our weekend recipe: an Asian variation on traditional lemonade.

Suggested Reading

• Rosemary-Laced Lemonade Tea
• Sparkling Sangria Tea
• Spiced Lemon Rice
• Brussels Sprouts with Roasted Hazelnuts and Lemon-Garlic Sauce
• Gremolata-Crusted Fish Fillets
• Orange and Radish Salad with Cinnamon Vinaigrette
• Organic Meyer Lemons