My search for a reliable breakfast

I eat fried eggs every day and the description here is baffling (if less so than how people apparently use dishwashers). Eggs are a great food. Maybe you are bad at cooking and refusing to think about it and instead seeking out quick fixes.

You shouldn't have any egg shells in your eggs: cracking eggs is easy. If you have some sort of egg-shattering problem, have you invested 1 minute of deliberate practice into mindfully cracking eggs and getting better at it? (For another 5 minutes, you can learn to crack eggs one-handed as well - it's not nearly as difficult as it looks.) Equipment? It's the eggs, the frying pan, and perhaps some oil. Cleanup should take seconds if you have a working frying pan - the idea of it being an ordeal that can only be done on vacation days is baffling and makes me wonder what you are doing. We're talking cleaning off the oil and a few stray bits of egg, not repainting the house or hand-forging heirloom cast-iron dishes.

If you want eggs for breakfast and view them solely as fuel, why not boil and peel a batch once per week then have an egg or two straight from the fridge at the start of the day? 0 morning prep time. Similarly, if you pre-cook a bunch of bacon and pack it away into the freezer, it's a matter of seconds to microwave some hot bacon in the morning.

I find that US grocery stores often have frozen breakfast options -- I'm partial to the sandwiches with some cheese, some meat, and some egg on an English muffin or similar. They can take some experimentation to figure out how your microwave best reheats them, and can also be DIY'd if you'd rather spend the prep time to make a big batch every week or two and control what ingredients go in.

Instant oatmeal packets are a popular breakfast option here, and dumping a packet into a bowl with some boiling water is about as low-effort as cooking can get and still be cooking. Depending on what you're doing to make your porridge, you may find it lower-effort to prep it like overnight oats.

You can fry eggs in the microwave. I use a disposable paper bowl, pour in a bit of oil (I use coconut), swirl it to coat the bottom and a bit of the sides (or use a cooking spray). Crack two eggs in, break yolks and puncture surface of the whites, then cover with folded paper towel, pop it in the microwave and hit "1". (Cooking time will vary by microwave, bowl size, etc. so you'll need to experiment.) Toss the bowl when you're done, and that's it for cleanup.

(Note: technically, the eggs are more being poached than fried, but the oil makes the taste and texture closer to fried eggs. There just won't be any browining.)

food for me is fuel

https://powersmoothie.org/ maybe? It embraces this view. The cleanup consists of rinsing a single blender.

A few years ago I switched to eating yogurt at breakfast. I mix whole milk plain and vanilla yogurt with whole milk Greek yogurt. The vanilla is for taste but it has some added sugars. The other two have no added sugars so I haven’t had problems with blood sugar spikes. They have plenty of protein and fats and keep me satiated well until lunch. Another benefit - I lost about 30 pounds over 6 months and I’ve maintained this weight.

Why not granola/museli with seeds and a banana or apple on the side?

Did you have blood sugar spikes with Amazfit Complete or Joylent? I'm unsure based off your wording. Also, were you using Huel black? You talk about Huel advertising to professional atheletes, and I was under the impression that they only did that for Huel black.

Could you try adding more water to Huel/Joylent? Just use half of the powder, fill the shaker with water... and when it is empty, add the remaining powder and fill it with water again. This would make your stomach feel fuller, slow down the sugar intake, and make the shaker easier to clean afterwards. Not sure if you already do it, but you can sip the Joylent slowly during your work, you do not need to do "breakfast first, work later".

Just a random idea, try eating some cherry tomatoes in addition to Joylent (between the sips). Extra fiber might further slow down the sugar intake and make the stomach feel full, and the cherry tomatoes do not require peeling or cutting, and will not make your fingers dirty when you eat them during work.

*

I open eggs by hitting them with the sharp edge of a knife, which creates a crack, where I put my thumbs and tear the halves apart (in my experience, this creates minimum shell fragments). The eggs go to some other vessel first, to easier fish out the shell fragments, only then to the pan. (An extra vessel to clear, but that takes like 3 seconds.)

By the way, you can cook eggs in a microwave. Remove the shells, put the eggs on a plate, prick the yolks with a knife or fork (otherwise the yolk might explode), cook for... dunno, 1 minute maybe, depends on power and the number of eggs. The taste is a bit blander compared to doing the same on a pan, but I think you won't mind. And it is much easier to clean the plate afterwards.

I'm a bit surprised mealsquares haven't been mentioned yet! I've been eating 3-4 a day for years. Modal breakfast is a mealsquare with a milk and whey mix.

Glycemic index isn't zero, but it's solid food. Good sweetspot of not ultrabland, but also not strong enough that I would get sick of it.

(Would recommend microwaving. My typical preparation is wetting one a little with some water, sticking it in a bowl, lightly covering with a paper towel to avoid the consequences of occasional choco-volcanism, and microwaving at 50% for 1.3 minutes.)

Stir creamy peanut butter into either raw oats or the breakfast cereal of your choice. Only downside, you definitely need to have a drink with it, i drink tea, which i would do anyway.

Optionally you can add fruit, sliced apple and sliced banana both work well, i prefer apple. When i feel like i want a treat, i add a few chocolate chips.

Things you might consider :

• eating capsule of complement fibers when drinking Huel. This slows down the absorption process and might reduce the spikes and comedown.
• add a tasteless oil (canola oil for example) to the Huel after adding the water. Stir a lot to make the two mix well (if needed add an emulsifier like soy lecithin or use a milk frother). The end result will be just like Huel but with a creamy texture and A LOT more calories.
• Some declination of powdered meals have extra proteins and less carbs. That might be a way to reduce the spiking.
• hard boil a batch of eggs in advance and eat them every so often.

Careful not to slip into ketosis without meaning to.

Sorry for "XY Problem"-ing this, but I felt strong sad emotion when reading your post and couldn't resist trying to help - you wrote:

Unless I'm eating with other people, food for me is fuel.

Have you tried to rearrange your life so that you can eat the breakfast together with people you care much more often, to the point where you no longer care to make it as quick as possible?

There's only so many ways our hardware can be stimulated to feel happy, don't give up on "eating together with close people"!

I eat a slice of Dave's killer bread with almond butter and some honey and cinnamon drizzled on top, microwaved for 30 sec, along with half a glass of vegan milk. I don't track my blood glucose, but am sensitive to simple carbs, and I feel quite good after this breakfast.

I used to simply eat a couple scoops of nut butter for breakfast, but then I grew soft or something.

There are low carb meal replacement drinks that won't spike your blood sugar such as Keto Chow.