Breakfast: A weekday repertoire.

For me?  One boiled egg and a glass of tomato juice.  

For my kids?  Most weekday mornings, one of these things. I put the coffee on, and then I decide which to make.  

• Peanut butter sandwiches.
• Cinnamon toast with a big glass of milk.
• Microwaved old-fashioned oatmeal with brown sugar, cinnamon, and a splash of milk.
• Eggs any way.  
• Extra-eggy French toast with maple syrup. 
• A bowl of plain yogurt with jam, honey, or maple syrup (their choice).
• Buttermilk drop biscuits, 50% whole wheat (see note below), with peanut butter and honey or jam

Once a week or so, I  make one of these slightly more involved breakfasts.  They are fine for a weekday, but much more streamlined if you prep them the night before.

• Whole-wheat buttermilk pancakes
• Steel-cut oats
• Whole-wheat raised waffles 
• "Boston" brown bread,  made with maple syrup not molasses

Isn't it de rigueur for homeschooling mothers to be more organized and deliberate about breakfast than this?   One friend of mine has a schedule: "If it's Tuesday it must be waffles," and so on.  Another friend of mine has a rotation of breakfasts, thirteen or seventeen of them (I forget which, I think it was a prime number though, and in any case not divisible by 5 or 7) which she runs through one at a time and then repeats.  

I thought about setting one of these up because it seemed so much more organized than my method, but then I decided not to mess with it, because decide-at-the-last-minute-from-these-limited-options works for my family really well. Every single one of those breakfasts is made entirely from things that I always have around.  All are meatless, and each is balanced enough, considering that my kids snack on fruit all day long.

NOTE:  Hannah taught me only yesterday that biscuits are really, really easy.  This morning I tried some drop biscuits on the fly.  She's right -- it took all of 20 minutes to make them, start to finish, and the boys loved them, so as of today I am adding them to my "decide at the last minute" repertoire.   Note to self:  Get a pastry cutter. 

Comments

[Kelly]

I make my steel cut oats overnight in the crockpot, so we eat that 2 or 3 days a week. Sadly, most of the other days are cereal, but I do also make peanut butter on toast, or leftover pancakes on occasion.

[bearing]

I tried steel cut oats in the crockpot but didn't like the texture. I like them pretty chewy. So now I put them in a rice cooker and plug the rice cooker into the timer to come on early in the morning. Regular "old fashioned" oats, however, microwave just fine in 7-10 minutes on 70% power. That's why the one is in my "requires advance prep" category and the other is in my "make in the morning" category.

Cold cereal, at our house, is an occasional treat. It's just too darn expensive on a per-serving basis, and it makes the kids waste milk. I can beat its price with local humanely produced eggs and bacon for the whole family!

[CJ]

Did you solve your foaming problem with steel-cut oats in the rice cooker?

[bearing]

CJ: No, they still foam, but Hannah taught me how to take the lid apart and clean it.

One of these days I'll have Hannah guest blog and then she can solve all your tricky homemaking problems too :-)

[CJ]

I was curious about whether you tried adding a little fat to squelch the foaming.

[bearing]

No, I forgot your suggestion. I'll try it next time.

[Kelly]

We use old-fashioned oats as back-up, too. Actually, my children initially turned their noses up at the steel cut oats because they didn't like the chewier texture. They much prefer the crock-pot version.

I stock up on about 3 varieties of cereal when it's on sale. It's still more expensive and less healthy than I'd like, but not as bad as it could be, either.