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Guest post by Laura Coppinger who blogs at HeavenlyHomemakers.com:
Well summer, it’s been fun. A slower pace, more leisurely breakfasts, relaxed mornings — it’s all been great. Now it’s time to get back into a routine, and I’m going to need to pick up the pace just a little bit.
But so help me, I will not trade relaxed, happy mornings for a frantic frenzy. Stressfully trying to figure out a harried breakfast, or compromising with foods that are expensive or less-than-nourishing is not an option. So how can we get school day mornings off to a great start?
Have a Plan
Healthy breakfasts that hit the table quickly rarely happen without a little forethought. It doesn’t need to be elaborate, it doesn’t need to take much time. Simply think ahead toward what will be filling and nourishing for your family. Make a list of some favorites. Here are some of ours:
- Applesauce Bread, served with eggs and fruit
- Scrambled Egg Sandwiches, served with fruit smoothies
- Baked Oatmeal Cups, served with berries
- Easy Breakfast Casserole, made ahead of time, served with fresh fruit
Pull It Out of the Freezer
So many great (and inexpensive) breakfast foods can be made ahead of time and frozen for healthy convenience. Taking time once or twice a month to prepare food ahead of time for the freezer allows me to quickly pull something tasty out to reheat on the fly, without taking time out of our busy morning to dirty mixing bowls, pots, and pans. Some of our favorite breakfast freezer foods are:
- Breakfast Burritos, served with grapes or oranges
- Whole Wheat Waffles, topped with berries
- Pancake Sausage Muffins, served with applesauce
- Giant Breakfast Cookies, served with fruit and yogurt
If you haven’t tried freezing muffin batter so that you can quickly bake muffins without any effort, you’ve got to try it. It’s my favorite time saving, freezer cooking method yet!
Make it the Night Before
I have found that while I’m making dinner for my family in the evening, I often have a few extra minutes while I wait for water to boil, meat to brown, or vegetables to steam. During those few minutes, I try to do some prep work toward our breakfast for the next morning.
I can crack open eggs for a casserole, stir together muffins, mix together dry ingredients for pancakes — anything that will save me time and effort on a busy morning! And I’ve found that if I’ve got the oven on to bake our dinner, if I have room, I may as well bake something for tomorrow’s breakfast too.
No time to make breakfast in the evening? How about after you get the dinner dishes cleaned up, you set out bowls, spoons, and Homemade Grape Nuts Cereal or some of Money Saving Mom®’s Homemade Instant Oatmeal for a quick breakfast the next day?
What do you do to make healthy breakfasts simple at your house? Here’s to a great school year, a fresh start, and many a delicious breakfast!
Laura Coppinger and her husband are raising four boys, ages 8-16. Their homeschool mornings often begin with a hearty breakfast such as described above, which keeps her hungry crew full until lunchtime — usually! Laura blogs at HeavenlyHomemakers.com where she encourages women daily in their effort to: eat simple, whole foods; enjoy family life; be grateful; and laugh at the spilled buttermilk and flying nerf darts.
I made these amazing egg muffins…..in a blender I put six eggs, some half and half (less than 1/4 cup) some shredded zucchini and some cooked sausage…..add pepper and pour in muffin cups…bake about 20 min at 425….when they come out they look like popovers but they fall and are great to pop in the microwave for a quick, no bread breakfast…..add a serving of fruit or maybe some cut up tomatoes and cucumbers……you can fill them with whatever you have one hand….they recipe says always use raw veggies though
We prefer a high protein breakfast, and eat eggs most mornings. They’re good, healthy, inexpensive, and quick to make, and lots of ways to add variety.
Once a week or so, I cook up some potatoes and vegetables — onion, green peppers, mushrooms, whatever I have on hand — and then just scramble it up with eggs. Or some days I’ll add some pre-cooked rice and grated cheese. If we have eggs without some sort of carb mixed in, then we’ll have whole wheat toast. My daughter likes a scrambled egg sandwich on an English muffin, which is a good option for school days when we’re pressed for time and need something that can be eaten on the way to school.
Every now and then we’ll have yogurt or cottage cheese and fruit, but that doesn’t keep us full all morning. Eggs combined with a carb will keep you full for half the day.
We’re not cereal eaters. We like muffins and pancakes and such but eat that sort of stuff only occasionally on the weekends. With all the sugar, they’re more of a treat than a regular, healthy breakfast.
At our house we make our own oatmeal packets to go with toast and eggs for most mornings. But I like the pancake and sausage muffin idea. I will have to give it a try my family really likes muffins.
I love this post because we were just talking about preparing breakfast for the family in my boot camp class last week. I will email this link to my fitness ladies tomorrow.