This past week I focused on making a “real” breakfast for my family…every…single…day. The earlier mornings were really a downer, but in the end it was kind of nice starting the day as a family around the table.
This week we had:
Monday: Crepes with ricotta cheese and blueberries
Tuesday: Pumpkin Spelt muffin and bacon
Wednesday: Whole Wheat biscuit with left over ham and fried egg (made into sandwiches – see pictures below)
Thursday: Steel Cut Oatmeal (cooked with half milk and half water) and an oven hard boiled egg. You MUST try the oven hard boiled egg trick. It is right up there with frying bacon in the oven as far as life changing kitchen tips. I’ve avoided hard boiled eggs for years because I hate peeling them, but with this method the shells just slid right off.
Friday: One egg blueberry pancakes. I amended this recipe by using a tablespoon of maple syrup instead of artificial sweetener.
Saturday: Breakfast Sausage & Scrambled
Sunday: Banana-Raisin-Oatmeal Muffins. These were a hit with the whole family, even the finicky 3 year old who insisted he would die without pancakes.
Banana-Raisin-Oatmeal Muffins
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Mix together:
1 1/4 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp honey
1/3 cup oil (I used olive, but anything will work)
2 large mashed bananas
1 beaten egg
Let mixture sit for about 10 minutes so that the rolled oats can absorb some liquid and then add:
1 1/2 cup oat flour (you can make this easily if you don’t have it on hand. You can find instructions with good pictures here.)
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup raisins (you could substitute nuts if you prefer)
Mix everything together and then add to some lined (or greased) muffin tins. Cook full size muffins for about 20 minutes and mini-muffins for about 15. This recipe gave me 8 full size muffins and15 mini-muffins.
Some tips on making a hot breakfast every morning:
– Make sure you have a plan when you go to bed. You don’t want to start the morning staring at your fridge.
– Consider what you have going on that day. If you have to be up and at ’em particularly early, look for make ahead options. The muffins on Sunday are a perfect example. Sundays are always a little hectic as we all have to be not only up but presentable and out the door rather early. Definitely not the morning for a fussy breakfast.
– Go to bed with a clean kitchen. You don’t want to be washing dishes when you first wake up.
This week we are stepping things up by not only having a hot breakfast, but making sure we have a culinary* vegetable with it. Maybe I can slip a vegetable or two by the kids’ defenses if I serve them before they are really awake. We started off this morning pretty basic with a mushroom and spinach omelet. Tomorrow will be a quiche of some kind. Once we get our CSA basket tomorrow afternoon I’ll plan further. Some recipes under consideration are: carrot pancakes, sweet potato oatmeal, potato pancakes. I’m open to suggestion here, so all ideas welcome!
* I’m specifying culinary vegetables and not technical vegetables for this challenge. Mushrooms and tomatoes may not be vegetables but for our purposes this week we are going to treat them like they are.
stepford knives 