What Musician Lisa Loeb Eats for Breakfast

From a hardcore caffeine routine to Hello Kitty waffles, the singer-songwriter tells BA how she starts her day

February 5, 2013

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What Musician Lisa Loeb Eats for Breakfast

Welcome to My Morning Routine, where we take a look at how people kick-start the day. And by "people" we mean celebrities.

Lisa Loeb might be best known for her 1994 hit Stay, from the generation-defining Reality Bites soundtrack, but the singer-songwriter has kept putting out great albums (including her newest, No Fairy Tale) to critical acclaim. She's also published a children's book and singalong album, The Disappointing Pancake and Other Zany Songs, started the Lisa Loeb Eyewear Collection, based on her own designs, and briefly hosted a show on the Food Network with Dweezil Zappa, son of Frank. She lives with her husband and two children in Los Angeles, and seems to have eliminated disappointing pancakes from her life.

Some people wake with the sun, I wake with my children. My son, Emmet, wakes up early, around 7, so I get up and feed him (he just started eating solid food), and then my daughter, Lyla, gets up around 7:30, though that changes a little each day.

I try to feed the baby before I have coffee, but try to have coffee before Lyla wakes up. I really understand the Folger's commercial now: coffee has always been my brain, but now with kids, I need it to keep up with them in the morning.

We have a JURA espresso maker, and I'm actually very specific about it--I do two three-ounce shots, one strong and one normal, and mix two teaspoons of sugar, half a cup of 2 percent milk heated in the microwave for 30 seconds, since I don't want to ruin the heat of the coffee. I use organic, unprocessed, unbleached sugar, and try to have it with really fine grains, so it melts in the coffee without needing to stir.

The beans are usually from King's Road in L.A. I like a really heavy, dark roast. I've been working on my own blend of light and dark beans, though, with a company called Coffee Fool, but unfortunately I don't have my own bag at home yet. It's a cool company, though, they're working with different musicians to create their own blends of beans to sell for charity.

I'm a two-breakfast person. Depending on when the kids wake up and I wake up, there's sometimes enough time to eat a piece of toast before things get going. It's usually from Ezekiel, or a ten-grain sourdough from the farmers' market, and I toast until it's crunchy. Then I spread unsalted almond butter on top, raw almond butter, and some kind of jelly--that's my variable. Will it be cherry? Or strawberry? Apricot? Raspberry? Whatever it is, we have the All-Fruit kind, or the Bonne Maman.

So I drink the coffee and eat the toast while my son's playing on the ground, and then my daughter's up, and we see what she wants for breakfast. It's usually something like 10-grain buttermilk pancakes with chocolate chips on top, or nearby, or at least near the plate. I have these heart-shaped molds that she likes, and it's fun that we can make them together, but they make huge pancakes. Sometimes we do Hello Kitty Waffles, though, with this waffle iron that does the face of Hello Kitty and the bunny character. I usually have a couple bites of whatever she's eating, though I like my pancakes with peanut butter and syrup, she prefers them plain, with just some jelly and chocolate chips. Oh, also, there's always fruit on the table, and I'm trying to get in the habit of serving the fruit before the pancakes come out, so she's more interested.

Before I had kids, I would love to do the New York Times crossword after breakfast, especially on Sundays, but now that I'm a mom, post-breakfast is time to get my kids dressed, get my son back down for his nap, get my daughter's teeth brushed, and so on. We're considering getting the paper delivered again soon, but for now it's all digital--when we were at my folks' in Texas recently for Christmas, they get the Dallas Morning News, and there's something really nice about sitting around and just reading the actual paper.

Once all the kids are taken care of, I usually eat my Greek yogurt, 2 percent, with more jelly or fruit or nuts, or cheese and crackers. Just a late-morning carb-fruit snack. I'm a person who can wake up in the middle of the night and eat, and I basically eat all day--a lot of kale, almond butter, chocolate chips, and then proteins like beans, salmon, maybe some chicken.

I grew up as a suburban America kid--a lot of white bread PB&Js, American cheese and bologna sandwiches. My mom made us breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and had it all together every night and morning, from frozen waffles to banana bread. She started the tradition of fruit and some kind of carb for breakfast, although sometimes we had, like, coffee cake.

I became more and more interested in food as I became more interested in health and losing weight. Just like a lot of other people in life, I always feel like I'm trying to lose weight--I don't know why. Now that I don't focus on it, I'm at a lower weight than I've been for most of my grownup life. It took a while to find out that just eating what I like, stopping when I'm full, moderate exercise, getting enough sleep, and drinking enough water...all of that just works out.

I hadn't planned on doing a food show, but I made this album called Cake <u>and</u> Pie, with the "and" underlined, because I believe that if someone offers, you should be able to have both. So I made this album with Dweezil Zappa, and for the tour, we got what we called a "pie-oven roadie" to be on stage with us, and it was almost like a variety show. We would play music, he would show how to make a pie, and then we'd play more music, and at the end, we'd have pie and cake samples. The record company didn't really get how cool that was, so we looked around for a place that would be interested in supporting that kind of thing, and found the Food Network. Having our own show was like a dream come true!