The Treehouse Café

Childhood magic, desserts for breakfast, and why imagination is a healing tool Written and read by Nicole Cody

Hello, Friends.

When I was a young child I wasn’t allowed to cook without supervision, but I could make my own breakfast, so long as it was something simple: a sandwich, cereal, toast, fruit. Some small thing I could concoct for myself. And I gave every concoction a magical name and a backstory, because I was that kind of kid. A magical name meant I could be the girl marooned on a pirate hideaway island, or the fairy who lived in the tree.

My grandmother favoured blue cheese on hot buttered toast, with a layer of plum jam. During my pirate era I made it too (it’s still a breakfast favourite) and called it the Mouldy Map, Signed with Blood. A bit gruesome, but delicious nevertheless.

And there was the Princess Parfait — layers of strawberry yoghurt, crunchy cereal and stewed fruit, served in an actual parfait glass with a long thin spoon. That one was for the mornings I was trapped in a tower, with only books and a magical crow for company.

Breakfast has always been one of my favourite meals. When we travel, it’s often the best part of the day — tropical patios in Chiang Mai and Koh Samui, a high rooftop garden in Gubbio, beachside tables just about anywhere, even dining-room mornings on cruise ships. These are such happy memories for me.

The delight left breakfast last year, during heavy-duty chemo for sarcoidosis. For a long stretch I was nauseous, or worse, and everything tasted wrong. My tastebuds have finally come back, but my appetite hasn’t, especially in the mornings. And I still need to get the protein in, to preserve my muscle mass, and to give my brain enough energy to function.

Breakfast became one more chore on an endless to-do list. Something to force down, when what I really needed was nurture. And there was no-one to give it to me, so I had to work out how to do that for myself.

My solution?

I decided to turn my Treehouse into a breakfast café for two, with an actual menu for the week ahead, which I printed out and stuck on the fridge. A throwback to when I used to cook the family meals on school holidays while pretending I was a chef...

🌿 Treehouse Café — This Week’s Specials

🍒 Black Forest at Dawn

🍎 Grandma’s Apple Crumble

☕ First Coffee in the Rainforest

🍌 Banoffee Bliss

🍋 Sunshine Through the Trees

🍫 Peanut Butter Cup

🤎 Cosy Café Morning

Because dessert for breakfast? Who hasn’t dreamed of that? Instead of breakfast being a chore, it became a mini-vacation for body, mind and spirit — something soothing, and a little bit naughty.

Now, when I’m exhausted and soul-weary and feeling unwell, breakfast is a high point of my day. Something I genuinely look forward to.

All of these breakfast delights can be prepped in advance without much energy or skill. In about fifteen minutes you can have a week’s worth ready for the fridge. Every recipe starts from the same base — oats, chia seeds, protein powder, a commercial protein pudding, and cottage cheese — so it’s easy, and it delivers plenty of protein, fibre and good fats. I change the pudding flavour through the week, using chocolate, coffee, salted caramel or vanilla, then add fresh toppings each morning. If I can’t finish a bowl in one sitting, it goes back in the fridge as a snack for later in the day.

If this sounds like something you’d enjoy, I’ve made a downloadable PDF with the full recipes and instructions — including a few extra tweaks for the days when you have a little more energy for kitchen prep. And yes, you can totally eat one of these for lunch or dinner instead, if that works better for you.

As a child, I used imagination to see me through the lonely stretches — the endless after-school days and school holidays when my parents worked and I was home, left to make my own company and my own fun. Now, as an adult, that same imagination that once made the Mouldy Map lets me sit down to Black Forest at Dawn, or Grandma’s Apple Crumble, and bring a little magic back to my morning.

The magic was never really about the food. It was about deciding that an ordinary morning — even a hard one — was worth enchanting. That’s something you can do too, at your own table, on your own most difficult day.

All my love,

Nicole xx