One of the early reasons for the success of fast food, was the ability to eat an entire meal without a fork or spoon.  Our forkless breakfast solution: The Pocket Scramble.

My kids love this way to eat their scrambled eggs.  Once in a while, I can sneak some mushrooms, peppers, or carrots in their eggs, but they are much happier with more egg, less veggies.

Another benefit to our Pocket Scramble (especially on this first day of school), is the amazing benefits of eggs on young, developing brains.  Eggs are a great source of Choline, which is a component of Acetylcholine, a powerful neurotransmitter that carries messages from the brain to nerves.  The consumption of choline is critical during the first 6 years of life to ensure maximum development of the brain’s memory center. (source)

Pair the amazing benefits of eggs, with a steady source of glucose from the Whole Grain Pita, and we’ve got a perfect recipe for getting our kids from breakfast till lunch at school.  Without the dips and spikes in blood sugar white bread would provide.

So, we’ve paired, convenience, brain development, and energy and came up with the perfect first day of school breakfast: 

The Pocket Scramble

Nathan, eating his breakfast:

  Then, I returned to the kitchen later, to find Nate having a second breakfast (cheerios and milk).  This kid must be growing.  He can eat a ton of food all of a sudden.

Have fun at school kids! (and mom’s)

We’ve been adding berries to our French Toast to make them a bit healthier (although with eggs and whole wheat bread, I think they are already pretty great!).  But this time we took it up a notch by adding a splash of pure orange juice, and wheat germ.

If you have never made oven French toast, You ought to try it.  There is definitely a crispy texture that seems different than French Toast on the pan.  The kids loved how it turns out, and I love that I can cook ALL the slices at once, rather than slave over the hot skillet for 30 minutes!

So, Here it is:

• 1/4 cup orange juice
• 2 TBL honey
• 3 whole eggs, 3 egg whites.

Whip up egg mixture until frothy.

Soak bread in egg mixture for 5 minutes.

Grease a cookie sheet or jelly roll pan very well!   (I melted butter in the pan).  Then sprinkle half the wheat germ along the bottom of pan.  Lay soaked bread on the prepared a cookie sheet.  Sprinkle the rest of the wheat germ over the top.

Bake in oven at 400 for about 10 minutes, or until eggs are cooked.

Why wheat germ?

• Great source of Vitamin E
• Great source of folic Acid!!
• In addition: Fiber, phosphorous, magnesium, and zinc!

Other French Toast Posts:

• Breakfast on a stick
• French Toast with Almonds
• Flaxy French Toast

Good morning!

I’ve got some basic banana bread for you this morning, that was a big hit with the kids (although my husband didn’t think it was sweet enough).  But come on honey, it’s not cake!  So anyway, my kids liked it, and that’s what this blog is about anyway… right?

BANANA TEA PARTY BREAD

• 1 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/3 cup brown sugar

In a separate bowl, I mashed and combined

• 2 bananas
• 4 TBL canola oil
• 4 TBL plain yogurt
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

I didn’t mash the bananas super well, and there was chunks of banana in the bread.. which we liked!   Then combined the wet with the dry ingredients.

Pour batter into loaf pan 9X5.  Sprinkle

• Dried, chopped banana chips
• Brown sugar

over the top! Crunchy and yummy topping for the bread.

Bake at 350 for 45-55 minutes (or until knife comes out clean)

(printable recipe)

And then of course, sit down to a lovely tea party.  It makes all the food you’ve made for the kids tastier!

Healthy benefits of bananas:

• Good source of potassium!  They can literally lower blood pressure (high blood pressure is becoming more common in CHILDREN today!
• Do your kids get heart burn?  Bananas are a natural antacid!
• High in B vitamins (improves nerve function)
• Good source of fiber.  So many kids have bowel trouble, fiber is a great way to relieve that.

Recipe notes:

• This recipe started with one from the book Good For Kids by Dr. Penny Stanway.  Her first ingredients called for 1 3/4 cup self rising wholemeal flour.  To make your own whole meal flour, add 1tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp salt for every cup of whole wheat flour.

First of all- I’ve got two giveaways:  A kids exercise DVD and three $25 Subway gift cards!  Head over to the product review/ giveaway page to enter.

Summer is the perfect time to make some fancy, tasty, and healthy kids drinks!  We call this one Slush-Berry.

For this one we used:

• 2 cups pineapple juice (drained from canned pineapple.. I’m always looking to repurpose that drained pineapple juice!)
• 1 cup club soda
• 2 cups frozen strawberries
• 1 cup ice

If you are trying to get your kids to eat ‘five fruits and vegetables a day’, drinks are such an easy option.  Drinks are great in the summer when my kids do not like to slow down to eat, let alone eat something of substance.  Their friends love them too, and the cost is reasonable if you can get your berries at the height of the season and freeze your own!

Also fun for fancy drinks, is to have your kids make their own drink coasters!

And for the record… this may be the last smoothie I make for awhile, because my Oster Blender has bitten the dust for good. Not even a year old, the crack on the bottom broke wide open with this last drink!

I’ve been re-reading the book Miserly Mom’s after uploading my bank accounts to Quicken and finding out how much we were spending on groceries!  One thing she recommended ten years ago (I have an old copy) was that snacks could be under $0.20 per snack, which I have stuck with for several years.

Secondly she recommends breakfast be under $0.25 per person.  When you are buying a $4.00 ten ounce box of cereal.. each bowl is $0.40. More than the target. Lucky for us however, our eggs are only $0.06 per egg!  Hooray!  Pair that with homemade bread, a tiny bit of lettuce and tomato, and we’ve got ourselves a filling, healthy, ten cent breakfast!  (with store bought bread from the Bread outlet, we get our bread ten cents per slice)

This is our poached eggs.  Super easy and quick to make. 

• Break an egg into a shallow bowl.
• Boil water in pot with 1 TBL vinegar
• Pour slowly in a pot of simmering water (boil the water, and then turn down to a simmer.
• Cook for 3-4 minutes or until whites are set, and yolk begins to thicken.

Healthy eating does not have to be expensive.  And this next month I hope to stay within my food budget to prove it

Want me to be totally honest and transparent here?  I budget $500 per month for food (family of 5).  Last month I spent $837!!  In my defense, I was super busy with school and did not shop the sales like I should. 

What’s your budget for food??

Our posts about $0.20 snacking:

• Affordable snacks
• Portion controlled Snacking
• Kid Approved Party Food
• Today’s Star: The Granola Bar

When you think of Rhubarb, is the only thing that comes to mind Rhubarb Pie?  One year my friend grew some rhubarb in her garden very successfully, but she told me, “We could only eat so much rhubarb pie, you know!” 

But this Strawberry- Rhubarb – Applesauce is totally worth growing some rhubarb for, or at least buying some.

How to find rhubarb:

• Rhubarb is a pinkish- reddish stalk that looks similar to celery.
• Found in the produce department of most major grocery stores.

(Photo)

The Sauce was super easy.  We used:

• 2 apples, peeled and diced
• 2 stalks rhubarb, sliced

Boiled in water about 10-15 minutes until apples and rhubarb were soft enough to easily slide a fork into.

Then Put the apples and rhubarb in a blender, along with

• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 4 strawberries
• 1/3 cup of the water from boiling the fruit

Then we blended for like just a second.  Just pulsed it until it looked blended because I like applesauce a bit chunky.  If your kids were raised on store bought applesauce, you may want to blend longer so it’s thinner and smoother.

(Print It)

MMMM, We Love this applesauce!!!

Why should you include Rhubarb in your diet?

• It has vitamin C, potassium,
• It’s low in calories
• It’s a vegetable!!
• Good source of fiber.
• Helps constipation, It used to be used as a laxative.
• interesting fact:  Children in Norway eat a stalk dipped in sugar!

Anyway- I’m out! Have a great Tuesday… be back tomorrow with, who knows what!

Don’t forget to enter the Easy Lunch Box Giveaway!

Related post: Homemade Applesauce

Before I forget…Mary Kathryn is giving away one of our Healthy Habits Plates on her blog.  There is only one day left to enter, so hop over and leave a comment to win one!

I do not need a photo to prove my kids were head over heels for this one!  If me and the kids had our way, we’d be eating breakfast food morning, noon, and night.  And at the top of our list would be French Toast!  This time, we skewered (with chop sticks) the French toast with blackberries.  Then I made a blackberry syrup- more like a sauce.  This was a fun way to eat French toast, because we could dip the Kabob into the sauce, rather than pouring it over our plates.

So, for the French toast, we use:

• Eggs (usually one egg per slice of bread)
• Milk, just a splash
• Vanilla extract
• Cinnamon

For the blackberry sauce. I used 1 cup of frozen blackberries.  Placed in a pot and simmered until runny and warm.  MMMM. this was really good!

I couldn’t decide what to say about why this meal is healthy.  There is the

• Cinnamon (already wrote about the health benefits of cinnamon)
• The whole wheat bread (Spoke about whole grains a few times)
• The eggs (many posts about the healthfulness of these beauties)
• The berries (hmm, couldn’t find a post about blackberries…)

So, this is why Blackberries should be a part of your kids diet:

• Vitamin C… 1 cup has 50% of your daily needs.
• Blackberries have an antioxidant (ellagic acid) that helps protect skin from sun damage.  (good if you are like me and forget to bring sunscreen)
• blackberries are rich in antioxidants (the darker the fruit the better) and have shown to reduce inflammation, and fight free radicals!
• Your kids should eat them because they are DELICIOUS!!

Right now blackberries are in season. We just picked up a case, 12 little containers, for $8.00!

Have you tried making yogurt cheese yet?  Basically it’s just draining the extra water out of yogurt until it’s more thick like a cream cheese consistency.

It’s a fabulous substitute to all things creamy.  We mostly use it as a sandwich spread (as you would with cream cheese), but it can also be used as a high protein, low-fat substitute for mayo, sour cream, dips, or you know what would be good… mixing some with peanut butter for a creamy spread.  MMM, If you could see me now, you would see me drooling.

Here is the super easy method:

• Scoop plain yogurt into cheese cloth (double layered), over a colander, over a bowl. My only colander is super huge, so I used the steam basket from my rice cooker.
• Put in fridge till desired consistency (the longer in the fridge, the thicker it will get)  But generally overnight at least!

  Can’t find cheesecloth?  I had been to several grocery stores and they either “were all out” or didn’t carry it, or I couldn’t figure out which aisle they would keep it.  I finally found some at Bed Bath and Beyond if anyone is looking.

This time we spread it on bagels.  Plain is good, but I had some strawberries, so we mixed them in.

Arranging it to look like a butterfly is always a fun way for breakfast or a snack for some kids..  My kids think they are too old for butterfly bagels..  When did that happen??

My kids have a certain devotion to plain old oatmeal with brown sugar.  Not super exciting, but they love it.  I don’t know why I even bother messing with a good thing, but I wanted to widen the possibilities here.   So, I came up with

Chocolate peanut butter cookie oatmeal

After I cooked the oatmeal with some low fat milk (according to oatmeal directions), I added:

• 2 tsp natural peanut butter
• 2 tsp agave (only because all my honey is completely crystallized.  You could use either I’m sure)
• 1 TBL semi sweet chocolate chips.

I thought it tasted yummy like those chocolate no – bake cookies!  My kids were super hesitant to try it.  But once they did, they gave it a thumbs up.

Thoughts about oatmeal:

We love oats so much we buy it in bulk. In fact, I know we have over 50lbs of oatmeal in our home.

Quick Oatmeal Tutorial:

Steel Cut Oats:  These are the whole oat grain (called a groat), but cut into smaller pieces by steel blades.  While it contains the same nutrients as rolled oats, some people prefer the taste and texture to rolled oats.

Rolled Oats: First, the groat is cut with the steel blade, but then they are rolled flat.  This helps to cut cooking time way down, and some people prefer this texture better.

Coach’s Oats: The people from Coach’s sent some of this oatmeal for us to try, and we thought it was super tasty too.  Here is the difference from their literature. “Our patented process begins with the groats and toasting them.  Toasting the groats brings the natural sugars to the surface.  Next the oats are cracked into small pieces.  This way they have the nuttiness and texture of steel cut oats, but cook quickly like rolled oats.

This is how we garden at our house, and it actually works surprisingly well!

• Step 1: bury a few seeds (however deep we feel like)
• Step 2: Set up the automatic timer on the sprinklers
• Step 3: Wait for the harvest!!
• Note: We never weed after we plant.  We’ve weeded out too many vegetable plants that way, thinking they were weeds.  We also don’t thin our plants (too cumbersome) but this practice cost us our pear tree…dead after one season for having too many pears)

And that is how we have ended up, year after year with a run-away crop of CHIVES!   Despite our best efforts to dig it up every year, it keeps coming back in more and more abundance.  But I love the chive plant.  It makes a beautiful centerpiece, and delicious aroma, and they are good for you!!

This morning, we went out to cut a few for Omelets.

Trimmed with scissors (perfect job for the kids)

Chopped with help:

And mixed in with our Omelets.   (not how the Healthy Plate is intended of course)

Interestingly, you can eat any portion of the chive plant (including the flower).  With it’s light onion flavor, chives are perfect in many ways:

• Mixed with some light cream cheese or sour cream for a dip or a spread
• Add to your potato bar
• Add to potato salad or mashed potatoes
• Add to salsa
• Season cooked vegetables with chives, such as cooked carrots
• Make your own ranch dressing
• Add to potato soup

If you haven’t stopped by, I finally indexed my recipes!!  Head over to check it out.  In the coming weeks, I’ll try to add photos to the subpages.