Being a Better Mom: Hot Breakfast

I've always been a fan of cereal. The variety gives me a thrill...there's just so much to choose from! And I love almost every kind. I rarely buy the sugary junk cereals, and these days I personally don't eat that much cereal at all. However, it does make for an easy breakfast for the kids on school days, so that is what we've fallen back on.

A couple weeks ago I made eggs and toast for my kids on a school morning. They were so happy, and I felt a teensy bit bad that I don't cook them breakfast more often. I asked around and realized a lot of parents are feeding their kids a hot breakfast almost every day. And then I felt a little bit guiltier. I think I cooked for them four days in a row, and I was feeling pretty good. They were enjoying things like hot oatmeal and eggs, and I liked knowing they were going off to school with some good, hearty food in their tummies. But pretty soon, we were back to the same old.

The thing is, I'm not exactly jumping spryly out of bed in the mornings. I'm hitting snooze once or twice (or three times...) and dragging my tired butt out of bed. I know I stay up too late, but I relish the quiet house with no children begging for more snacks and more help with homework. My brain and soul need calm, decompressing time. It's the introvert in me that requires time alone to refresh. So it's hard for me to get up 20 or 30 minutes earlier to cook. That doesn't sound like much time, I realize, until the alarm is going off in the morning and you'd kill for just 20 or 30 more minutes of sleep. Plus once I'm out of bed, I'm still not necessarily up yet, you know? I'm more like stumbling around the house with my eyes half open.

But. I'd like to try again. I'm thinking it's probably not a good idea to put too much pressure on myself with unrealistic expectations, and cooking breakfast daily is not going to be happening at this point. But I think I could commit to making the kids breakfast three or four times a week. That sounds do-able.

A few ideas for quick and easy school morning breakfasts:

Oven pancake, before adding the sugar

• Oatmeal. I pour some oatmeal in each bowl and heat the water to boiling in my tea kettle. Then I pour some water in, stir it up, and add some milk. The milk makes it tastier and helps cool it off. Quaker has some good unsweetened flavored oatmeal that comes in a re-sealable bag. It's perfect with a couple spoonfuls of stevia. Otherwise, if I'm using plain oatmeal, I add a little brown sugar and cinnamon. I'd love more oatmeal recipes!
• Eggs. I typically just scramble them and serve them with toast and maybe turkey sausage. Bacon takes too long to cook. Sometimes I serve them up as part of breakfast sandwiches. Just kind of don't scramble the eggs so much, so they form a sort of egg patty. Then you can cut it up into pieces that will fit on a bagel or biscuit. Add a slice of cheese and a turkey sausage patty.
• Oven pancake. I love LOVE oven pancakes. Since I sprinkle mine with powdered sugar, this is a little sweet for a school day, but once in awhile, I think it's fine. The great thing about an oven pancake is that it's easy to mix up with just a few ingredients, and then I can get ready while it's baking.
• French toast. Waffles take forever, and I'm not a competent pancake maker. But I can whip up some French toast pretty quickly. Again, with syrup it's a little sweet for school. Once or twice a month, though, why  not?

That's all I've got. I could definitely use some more ideas! Do you have any great muffin recipes? Someone on the Facebook page suggested making them the night before. Or other ideas?

Progresso Recipe Starters

I've been in a major cooking rut for awhile. I'm frazzled, unfocused, and uninspired when it comes to meal planning and execution. Every day I have this general idea that I'm going to need to provide breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the troops, but each meal is successively more traumatic*. Breakfast is pretty easy. Lunch is a little more complicated. Dinner is a nightmare. Since I turned vegetarian, and Chris drastically cut his meat consumption, the situation has become all the more dire. Chris and I often end up eating our meals after the kids have been fed, and it's very disjointed. My goal is to find more meals our whole family can enjoy together, even if they involve simple tweaks so that Chris and I can modify our plates to fit the vegetarian bill.

Tonight, like every other night, I was rummaging through the cupboard looking for inspiration when I spotted a can of Creamy Parmesan Basil Progresso Recipe Starters that I had recently received from BzzAgent. Thinking quickly, I took out a box of pasta, then a large carrot, a pepper, Parmesan cheese, and some frozen broccoli. And voila! Dinner came together in a snap. Here's what I did, easy peasy:

1. Put a large pot of water on high heat to boil
2. Chopped up 1 large carrot and 1 green pepper while the water was boiling
3. When the water was boiling, I added about half a box of spaghetti and cooked as directed on the box
4. I poured a bit of olive oil into a skillet (enough to thinly coat the pan) and added the carrot, green pepper and some frozen broccoli. Then I covered it and cooked on low/medium heat while the spaghetti was cooking.
5. Drained the pasta and returned to the pot
6. Added about half a can of Creamy Parmesan Basil Recipe Starters to the cooked and drained pasta
7. Mixed the vegetables and some Parmesan cheese to the pasta and sauce mixture, and heated it all on low heat

And the verdict is...

The Good  Chris, Connor, and I loved it. We cleaned our plates, and Chris and I both had seconds. The Creamy Parmesan Basil flavoring was really good, and complemented the vegetables quite well. Other vegetables could be used in place of the carrots, pepper, and broccoli; making this a versatile recipe. Plus it was easy, which makes it a big fat winner in my book. No special ingredients were required. Simply. Easy. Tasty. I will be making this again.

The Bad  Lucy was in a "mood". In this case, being in a "mood" meant a blatant refusal to so much as try her dinner. As parents know, these moods are contagious. So as soon as Lucy started carrying on about how disgusting her food was; before she took a single bite, mind you, Mathilda caught the mood and pushed her plate aside before taking a single bite. So two girls were sent to bed without supper. I was really annoyed, because I'm pretty positive they would have liked it if they had tried it. Bethany was at a friend's house, so she's off the hook this time.

Despite the reaction from Lucy and Mathilda, I stand firm: I'm making this again. It was too easy and too good not to make it again. It's vegetarian, so we can all eat the same meal together. It's inexpensive and versatile. Most importantly, it's simple and requires no special trips to the grocery store to pick up weird ingredients that I don't keep on hand. And now I'm intrigued to try the other flavors of Progresso Recipe Starters, which include: Creamy Portabella Mushroom, Creamy Roasted Garlic, Creamy Three Cheese, and Fire Roasted Tomato.

Have you tried Progresso Recipe Starters yet? If so, which one did you try, how did you incorporate it into your meal, and did you like it? For more meal ideas, additional recipes can be found on the Progresso website.

Thank you BzzAgent and Progresso for providing me with a free can of Recipe Starters. All opinions are my own.



* Traumatic might be a bit of a dramatic over-statement.

Dinner Courtesy of SheSpeaks

Recently I had the opportunity to try a new product from Hormel via SheSpeaks. I wrote about it here on my blog, and as a thank you, SheSpeaks sent me some coupons for 2 FREE packages of Johnsonville Italian sausage and 2 FREE jars of Rinaldi pasta sauce. As I always say, you can't beat free with a stick. A couple nights ago I made a pasta dinner with this delicious combination. 

I apologize, by the way, for the wretched pictures. I have the cutest little pink camera that takes the WORST pictures. I am currently willing the universe to send me an awesome camera.


I poked a few holes in the sausages and cooked them, covered, with a little water, turning them every few minutes until they were fully browned. This took 30 minutes or so. I had to add a little water a couple times so they didn't burn. When the sausages were done I chopped them up and added them to some cooked rotini, along with the sauce. If I had had more time, I would have let the sauce and sausage simmer together for awhile before adding it to the pasta, but everything I do is in the spirit of flying by the seat of my pants. Nonetheless, it was really yummy. Thanks for dinner, SheSpeaks!

Life Doesn't Always Have to Be Scary

I was raised, with the best of intentions, in fear. The purpose was to keep me safe, but at times the over-protectiveness was a bit stifling.

Cooking, for example, is a mystery to me that I just sort of stumble through because, well, we George's like to eat. But my mom never taught me to cook since she was absolutely certain I would burn the house down if I got near the stove. Luckily I can read and more or less follow a recipe, but there are times I think to myself, "shouldn't I have learned how to do this like 20 years ago?"

And I suppose my mom never taught me to sew because then I would have, you know, pricked my finger and fallen into the inevitable sleep of 100 years. Because that is what always happens when you mess with dangerous sewing needles. My aunt gave me a sewing machine a few years ago, by the way, and I've pretty much taught myself how to use it (and lived to tell!). However, the truth is I don't exactly know what I'm doing. Which is kind of sad since my mom and her sisters can sew like nobody's business. 

I don't mean to pick on my mom. I was an only child. So I naturally lived in a parallel universe where danger lurked around every corner. Particularly perilous were the unassuming, "safe" seeming things; you know, like puppy dogs and parked cars. Anyone who knows my mom will be nodding in acknowledgment right about now, because I am not exaggerating. At all.

Now that I'm a parent myself, I know how absolutely terrifying it sometimes feels to let go and give my children opportunities to explore and learn, and how unnerving it can be to stand back even though they might get hurt. Last summer when Bethany wanted to ride her bike around the block, I hyperventilated a little but I let her do it. Okay, it took some convincing, but I let her do it. And I didn't follow her. (I did make her take her brother). When she asks to cook scrambled eggs or grilled cheese sandwiches, I panic slightly on the inside, but I agree - with only a minimal number of reminders to be careful. I may have been known to say something like "don't catch your hair on fire" once or twice, but geeze, that could happen.

But the thing is, I don't want my kids to live in a world of "what if?". I want them to take chances and push themselves out of their comfort zones and do things they never thought they were capable of. 

I don't want them to be afraid to LIVE. 

I don't want them to wait until they're living in a dorm with no clean underwear to learn how to use a washing machine. Although where's the danger there? Maybe that one had more to do with fear of material damage. Or else the drowning thing. Because you know a 2x4 could randomly fall from the ceiling, hit you in the head and knock you out cold, thereby causing you to fall head first into the washing machine, left to drown with no one around to help you. It could happen.  

A little bit of fear is a good thing. If fear keeps my kids from doing drugs or drinking and driving or going to bed without brushing their teeth, well I'm totally okay with that. Yes! Be afraid! But I guess I want them to save the fear for the big stuff. And I'll try to do the same.

(even though it's really, really hard).