Better-For-You Banana Challah French Toast

On Christmas morning, I found myself tasked with making french toast – this Banana Challah French Toast is what I came up with (based on the ingredients in the fridge in Florida.) A very different recipe than those I had planned for this last Recipe Club newsletter of 2021. I’m incredibly grateful for the support, and stage provided by this space, so inspired by all of you and so excited to help you achieve your goals – in sport and in life – and for all of the recipes I had planned that are designed to help you crush your goals in sport and in life, this decadent-healthy breakfast represented them perfectly.  I mean, who doesn’t love french toast on a holiday, ya know?

I hadn’t been involved in the shopping or preparing any meals at the home of my soon-to-be-in-laws. And the assumption that we HAD ingredients to make french toast accompanied the request. I had a mini panic as I peeked into the fridge, and as I noticed that all of the full-fat, whole ingredients that I was hoping to find in there to create an ultimate, custardy, toasty, golden, cozy breakfast were nowhere to be found, I fell into my stride.

Most of the great french toast recipes I’ve found call for full-fat dairy milk, cream, and several eggs to make the toast slices rich, but we had very few of these things. But we DID have a loaf of challah bread and from that we built a lovely feast.

I set to work blending up a couple of eggs that I did find in the fridge (which could be replaced by yogurt or coconut yogurt for those vegans in the bunch,) a few of the bananas that had been bought for the little people in our holiday squad, vanilla, spices, and milk. Pete wandered into the kitchen + offered to help me dredge the little cloud slices of toast in the batter and to griddle them up properly. Soon, we found ourselves enveloped in the sweet scents of Christmas morning, confident that the family circled around the table weren’t going to be the wiser that our breakfast was going to be one million times more virtuous than they expected, but just as decadent, celebratory and fun. And we were right.

This recipe represents all the things I want to share with you here in this little space. I want these recipes to be a reminder that YOU CAN DO IT. That you can work with the simple ingredients you have to make meals that are better for you than something out of a package, something out of a box. That using whole, uncomplicated, mindfully selected ingredients is the key to getting you there. I want you to read these recipes and recognize that there is a whole new world of ways to consider food that does not include the shape of our bodies, the calories our foods contain, or the macros they provide. That there is a science, and a system for building a healthy, vibrant life that doesn’t include contemplation of “good or bad” foods and instead requires us to think about how the natural alchemy of ingredients interacts with our lives to create health, wealth, and wellbeing. That’s right. It’s all right here in this simple, lovely plush, golden + crispy little french toast recipe.

The alchemy of a really great recipe.

To be clear, I was absolutely winging it when I pulled out the blender to make this french toast. But I knew a few things that I wanted this recipe to achieve for us. We wanted it to be custardy and creamy. This is achieved by fat – usually full-fat dairy – in traditional recipes. We wanted it to be sweet – but not sweetened by sugar. And, I wanted this decadent, indulgent breakfast to keep us wanting to get up and move — playing on the beach and in the waves for hours after we enjoyed it, instead of sending us into a Christmas morning coma.

Bananas are filled with creamy, natural fats that are quick burning without a sugar rush, and they were a great substitute for some of the eggs and fat in this recipe. The result worked out beautifully when I added a little bit of easy-to-digest oat milk, and a bit of fat from yogurt as well.

Bananas IN, not ON.

I hope that this little newsletter helps open your eyes to a world of exploring food that includes nothing about macros or calories, but I also hope that it opens your eyes to the ways that our bodies are actually processing and turning the powerful fuel we eat into the vibrant lives we want to live. Considering how we eat, what we eat, when we eat it and with what falls into that wisdom.

Ayurvedic medicine emphasizes the fact that our digestive systems are critical to our health. If we aren’t honoring our digestion, it doesn’t matter what we eat. The chemistry of our foods, as they interact with our digestive systems, is just as important as WHAT we choose to eat. And, this brings us to the way we typically eat fruits.

Fruits digest very easily, and far faster than other ingredients we consume on a regular basis – particularly complex carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. When we eat a meal, our bodies set to work digesting the entire bolus of food (that’s a real term to describe food in our bellies) as a unit. Foods don’t leave the stomach until the entire lot has been digested, and since fruits break down faster, they hang out in our guts until everything is ready to GO. This results in over fermented fruits hanging out in our bodies. You know what overripe fruits taste and smell like? Yeah. Unlike fine wines that benefit from a little extra fermentation, over-fermented fruits in the gut do NOT benefit, nor does our digestive health.

But, when we change the chemistry of the fruits BEFORE we eat them, they behave differently in the gut. Cooking fruits – in this case, bananas – INTO our french toast instead of slicing bananas and putting them on TOP of our toast makes a world of difference in this case. Specifically, it will result in less bloating, that feeling of “gut rot” from eating too much sugar, and more consistent digestion throughout the day.