The first thing every day should be a new beginning. It is in more ways than one. First forget those boxed cereals. Also cross buttered toast, bacon, sausage, fried eggs and hash browns off your list. Sorry, but our new day doesn't start that way.

Like hot cereal? How about some oat meal or cream of wheat made with water instead of milk and then some real grade A or B (In this case "B" is better than "A".) natural Maple Syrup or honey stirred into it in your bowl. Maybe something a little more exotic. Try folding some strawberry or raspberry preserves in before you start?

Or cold cereal? Start with plain toasted oats or shredded wheat. I don't use milk, ever try apple juice? And you can always get fancy and make up your own granola leaving out those heavy fats like coconut and walnuts.

I like lots of roughage in my cereal because MS patients are prone to have trouble with constipation. So I start my granola with oat flakes. I toast sunflower, sesame and pumpkin seeds on a cookie sheet in the oven along with a few slivered almonds. This isn't really a recipe, it's only an outline of a suggestion. Cereal is a very individual taste so be creative.

In a large bowl I mix my toasted seeds, nuts and oat flakes with some plain All Bran and toss it all together.

Since I do not use milk (not even skim milk for me) I pour apple juice in my cereal bowl and add honey and fresh fruit. (what ever is in season. Strawberries, blueberries, apples, pears, bananas, etc)

Let it rest for a few minutes in the apple juice so the oats and bran get soft, then enjoy. And it is very filling so don't plan on wanting any snacks before lunch.

Usually morning for me is pretty simple. Black coffee (no cream or creamer) and toast. Not gooey white bread toast, either Barb makes home made bread or we buy the "Breads for Life" 7 grain bread from the health food store. Since I can't use butter or margarine I pile a whole bunch of real honest sweet, fresh fruit preserves on my toast. On a low fat diet I need the extra calories to maintain my body weight.

MS patients on the Swank Lo-fat Diet are always trying to figure out ways to not turn into Skinny-Mini. A big helping of jam helps.

How about some fresh biscuits? Barb has learned to make what we laughingly call clunkers without milk or hard fat. 3 cups of King Arthur unbleached flour. 3 tsp fresh Rumford (no aluminum) Baking Powder. 1/4 tsp Baking Soda. 1 tsp plain sea salt. 1/2 cup + 3 tbs. of Sunflower Oil. 1 cup, of smooth unsweetened, natural apple sauce. And 1/2 tsp of fresh lemon juice. Sift dry ingredients together. stir oil into mixture. Then stir apple sauce mixed with lemon juice in until a soft dough is formed. For traditional firm biscuits roll out dough on a floured board one inch thick and cut out biscuit rounds. For a more fluffy biscuit softly press out dough onto a baking sheet by hand. Bake at 400 degrees until lightly brown. The time will very with altitude and humidity. (15 to 20 minutes in Florida's sea level humidity)

Pile some preserves high on halves of those biscuits and that will carry you through till lunch time. Want more? How about serving the biscuits with a soft boiled egg? Now you can skip lunch and go straight on till supper and never have a belly growl.

All that oil! Won't Swank come down on you with both feet? That translates to anything from seven big biscuits to about ten normal biscuits. At one biscuit today and the rest in the freezer for other days in other weeks and we are not out of line on oil for any specific day.

Want something sweet once in a while to start your morning? Well, forget the donuts and commercial sweet rolls, they are loaded with fat. Try baking some of Barb's Schneckenudel. (Another one of our made up names for a made up recipe.) In actuality this is a home made Lo-fat cinnamon roll. This is my only real concession to milk. But these freeze well and Barb only makes two batches a year. So, I might have one this morning and not another one for a week or two. That small of an amount of skim milk on such an infrequent basis does not trigger my milk allergy. And, it is something I can really look forward to.

For the dough. 3 and 1/2 cups of King Arthur unbleached flower. One 1/4 oz package of active dry yeast. (Barb uses Fleischmann's) 2 Tbs. sugar. 1 cup skimmed milk. 1 Tbs. salt. 1 egg. 1/3 cup Sunflower oil. Sift flour into a large bowel. Make a depression in the flour, put yeast, sugar and mix a couple ounces of milk in the depression, stir lightly and put covered in a warm, dry place to work for 15 minutes.

1/2 to 1 cup (I like raisons so we do a whole cup) of dried raisons soaked in water for plumpness.

While your yeast is working: Make the filling - 2 Tbs. ground cinnamon, 1 cup sugar. Mix thoroughly in a bowl. Slowly mix in approximately 1/4 cup of pure maple syrup to form a slightly dry paste. Let it rest.

When your yeast flour has worked for 15 minutes: Stir the remaining ingredients into the flour bowl. Remove to a breadboard working the dough until it is smooth and has a slight sheen and make it into a ball. Lightly oil your bowl, put the dough back in and cover again for 25 minutes until the dough rises nicely. Punch it down and remove to a large floured breadboard.

Lightly roll out the dough into a rectangle 1/4 inch thick. Lightly brush the dough with oil and sprinkle the entire surface with the cinnamon paste. Evenly spread the raisons over entire surface. Carefully roll up dough on the long side into a strudel. Slice the roll into 3/4 inch pieces (a Ginsu knife with a serrated blade works best) Place the slices (17 or 18) on a cookie sheet and cover to let it rise again for another 20 minutes. Bake at 350 degrees about 20 - 30 minutes until they turn golden.

You can always change the filling. An Almond paste is very good, but there you need to use 2 Tbs. of cream to get the consistency right so I wouldn't do that more than once every couple years. Right now we are working on a tart apricot filling, but that's going to take some more tweaking before it is right.

Everybody says to me how can you live that way, giving up so much good food? I really don't feel like I've given up very much. Milk products cause me sinus problems and lots of red meat and cheese would put me in a wheelchair. My life and lifestyle is all about choices.

I've been on the diet for over thirty-three years. But I'm not perfect. Barb's father was a real German butcher. There is no way I could always avoid some of the no-no's. I think I've had bacon at least 6 times and sausage maybe 12 or 13 times in 33 years.

Heck, I've even had the big NO-NO. On our honeymoon down in the Caribbean I had real Danish butter laid on thick on toast one morning. (1977) Then in Germany in 1984 I had some real honest Swiss Cheese one time. And when Barb went to England in 1997 she brought me back a taste of real Irish butter. There's three great BIG NO-NO's in just twenty- years!

No, I'm not perfect. But I stay close enough to perfect in order to stay on my feet.