{I first published this as a Google document, mainly because I wasn’t going to have any pictures to go with it, and you know I like posts to have pictures. My thought was that this should be something easy for you to print out and put in your menu binder. But now Google has messed with things, so I’m just posting it.}
Worksheet VIII: Save a Step at Breakfast
So now that you have mastered dinner (click on links I-V above!), let’s do breakfast.
You need to be stocked up with the right things, and as I always say, each family is different.
Do the same thing with your menus that you did with dinner: Find out what everyone really wants to eat and add your special dash of common sense and practicality. Then make a shopping list based on what you eat. For breakfast it will be simpler than for dinner, because a week’s rotation is usually plenty.
Breakfast must have protein, and milk alone isn’t enough. Personally, I am subject to fits of low blood sugar, and I am well aware of how I don’t function unless proteined up. Do you think a kid is any less affected?
Do just what you want, but do something! At our house, the weekday breakfast selection looks like this:
~ Toasted bagels and cream cheese. (I am lucky that my cheap store sells a store brand of bagels that are tasty and don’t include any soy flour or high fructose corn syrup. I stock up on good cream cheese when it goes on sale – usually around holidays – and it lasts a good while, although it doesn’t have preservatives. It’s the packaging, I think. Either that or I’m in la-la land!)
~ Eggs with shredded cheese and leftover breakfast meat crumbled in if I have it; toast with butter.
~ A Papa’s Special. Butter a toasted English muffin and put peanut butter on one side and honey on the other. Smush together. Technically, this is a Mama’s Special, because Papa doesn’t butter his. But it’s better my way. (Funnily, a friend to whom I was offering breakfast ideas {well, she asked!} said that her family had the same thing, calling it Daddy’s Special!)
~ Pancakes with breakfast meat on the weekends, with leftover breakfast meat crumbled into the batter during the week. (This is incredibly easy with my Pancake Mix – see the Breakfast Recipe document.)
~ Oatmeal Porridge Like Mother, Like Daughter. (Filling and yummy – see the Breakfast Recipe document.) I confess that we don’t eat this super often, because I’m too spacey to get it ready the night before, but when I do, it’s appreciated! Also, leftovers are easily microwaved, so one cooking bout can last a few days.
~ Cereal. Since mostly we like eggs or bagels, there isn’t a lot of cereal consumption around here. But it is handy in a rush, if used cautiously and with guidelines.
#1. Mixing the cereal. At first this concept totally grossed me out. But then I saw that if you insist on a sugary cereal being mixed with granola, the child is happy and you are happy, and it’s actually tasty. No eating even whole-grain Cheerios by themselves around here. And by sugary I mean what most people consider health food. A fruit-loop has never crossed my threshold!
#2. Make your own granola (recipe in the Breakfast Recipe document.) Now, Nourishing Traditions is anti-cereal and anti-granola. But I’m not sure I understand exactly why. I cook my granola at 325*. Granted, it’s not soaked, but elsewhere in the book it seems clear that soaking isn’t always required. So until I know more, I’m sticking with this.
#3. Also have a piece of toast, some yogurt, or a piece of cheese. My teenagers get away from me on this, but by now they know how they feel by 10 o’clock — it’s up to them. But no 6-year-old is having a bowl of cereal and calling it breakfast!
A lot of this can be done by the child himself. I let them more or less choose, although if someone is feeling wan or acting up, I make them their eggs.
So all of this goes on your grocery list. Try to figure out how many packages of bagels you use in a week. Next week adjust. Put them in your big freezer.
Get more than enough eggs. Eggs are cheap. They last. Why buy one carton at a time? With my seven at home, I bought up to six dozen at a time.
Buy good sharp shredded cheddar cheese. It’s no more per pound than a brick, and it’s needed to anchor those eggs. If it’s already shredded you will use it.
Stock up on oats and Wheateena. Buy a few cartons of buttermilk. (I don’t hold with dry buttermilk. By my calculations it seems much more expensive, and buttermilk isn’t going to spoil around here with all the pancakes and biscuits everyone likes!)
Get extra bacon on sale, cook it up on Sunday morning, shield it with your body (everyone can live with two or three pieces of bacon — they don’t need six for crying out loud), and hide it way back in the fridge to use during the week. Same with sausage.)
Don’t practice false economy. What you spend in bagels you will reap in snacks: no one will need a fruit roll-up if they have eaten properly to begin with. Not to mention psychiatry bills for the home-school burnout!
{This post has all the menu-making worksheets linked! There are a lot!}
Will you see a comment way over here? I’m reading through this as I emerge from the Baby #5 fog (the baby is 9 months, each one seems to have created more fog) and get ready for a new school year. I’m interested in the “spend in bagels, reap in snacks” idea. Do you not do snacks? I cook 100% from scratch, three meals a day. I need to not also be in the kitchen two more times fixing snacks, if possible. But my husband is positive that our kids needs snacks to get through their day. And I just feel completely bowled over by the vast quantity of food we go through feeding seven of us (kids are 9 and down, three boys). Would you say that getting the meals well-balanced and substantial can be enough?
I’ve had the same question over the last few years. Right now our three children are ages 3, 2, and 6 months. I’m equally in a fog and cooking three squares a day. I’ve found that a snack in mid afternoon works well for us. Partly being that we have eary risers (6:00am) and eat an “early” lunch. 10:30/11:00. With an early dinner also we can survive on no snacks but 5:30/6 pushes them a bit so a small snack around 2:30/3 works for us. Just really not wanting to be in and out of kitchen all day, you know?
Glad to see I’m not the only one reading this post nine years later! I suspect, with regard to snacks, Auntie Leila would not be opposed to them. Am I right? There’s been other things on this blog about feeding your children if they are acting up, since they might just be hungry! Kids get hungry, especially growing kids….
Poor Susan, only getting an answer four (FOUR) years after she poses the question!! I don’t know how I missed it!
Snacks are just something you have to figure out with all the variables. Sometimes you need them to get through the day. Sometimes it’s pretty clear that they are throwing off everyone’s eating and being-interested-in-other-things groove. Use your common sense. If they are eating heartily at meals but still somewhat fading when the next one is far off on the horizon, by all means, a snack will help. If they are picking at their eggs-and-toast but clamoring for granola bars, put your foot down.
The “spend on bagels, reap in snacks” comment was aimed at the people letting kids pour a bowl of sugary cereal and then wondering why there is a whining puddle of humanity on the kitchen floor at 9:45.
Hope this helps!