The Great Breakfast Dilemma

This is my child, who knows that his mother is just this side of comatose in the mornings.

He says, "I want jelly toast and popcorn for breakfast!"

I say, "Sure, why not?"

It is not until I'm placing the plate before him that I think, in all my glorious morning mama wisdom, "Wait! What am I doing? The most important meal of the day should not be popcorn and toast!"

I gave it to him anyway. It's better than sugar cereal, right?

I took a picture so that when he's 14 and tells me that I never let him do anything, I can say "Well how many mothers do you know who give their kids popcorn for breakfast?"

I'm sure this will help. Surely he'll back down and say "you're right mom, I don't need to pierce my elbows or spend Spring Break in Rio, not with a cool mom like you! How about I do some laundry and mow the lawn instead?"

Or something like that.

I had to draw the line though when he asked for cookies. Of course he had eaten three before he asked, so really the drawing of the line was kind of pointless. Peanut butter has protein in it, right?

So, when I came across this I started to feel a wee bit guilty. Lots of people are struggling to feed their kids. Lots of people have really few options in the way of fresh, healthy foods for their little students. Me, I;m just not a morning person, and that's a lame excuse for not offering anything more creative and healthy for breakfast than toast and the occasional muffin or waffle (in my defense, I do make a pretty darn good waffle, in an iron and everything).

But what's a girl to do? They don't eat eggs in the morning, only at night and covered in ketchup. Go ahead make the face.

They do like french toast, so that's something - something whose health benefits seem somewhat negated by the lake of syrup in which it sits.

I thought maybe it would help if I planned ahead instead of trying to come up with a stellar breakfast in my pre-caffeinated morning state. So, tonight I made some breakfast cookies (a la Erin Baker's), and at this very moment we have some homemade yogurt incubating (which sounds kind of scary if you ask me) in the oven. Hopefully that will go into smoothies tomorrow morning.

I'll run it all by my kitchen testers tomorrow and let you know how that goes.

What do you feed your kids for breakfast?

Comments

[Lisa]

This made me laugh!
I am a morning person and breakfast is big here. As soon as I read the beginning of your post I thought........... OH, grits in a different form. Way to go Mom, thinking outside the box. Happy Mothers Day to you!

[Barbara Smith]

hmm, today was brown rice wraps with peanut butter and honey. and almond milk. yesterday was buckwheat and chocolate chip pancakes. the day before that was steel cut oats (soaked in boiling water the night before for maximum health benefits). also, green smoothies make a pretty regular appearance (spinach peach pineapple being our favorite). When I'm too tired for any of that, I'll scramble a couple of eggs with olive oil and sea salt. Served with watered down orange juice (the vitamin C helps the body absorb the iron in the eggs).

I should mention that breakfast starts when we wake up at about 11:00... so it should really be called brunch.

[Visty]

Cereal and milk most mornings. It's what they want. I make sure that all the cereals in the house have no corn syrup and no partially hydrogenated oils. This results in a short list of Kix, Quaker Squares, Cheerios, and Life. But it works.