Healthy Breakfasts - Parts 1&2

I am going to do a series of posts all week(Mon-Sat) on healthy breakfasts . This post contains Monday and Tuesday (since I wasn't able to post yesterday).....

Lately my middle child, whom I call Middle A, has been an extremely picky eater. She is refusing a lot of foods that used to be her favorites. She is wanting to eat the same things over and over. My 1 year old is also pretty finicky, but his issue is mainly with texture. My 9 yr old, well, he'll eat anything and is not a problem. So as you can imagine, I am either finding myself making different things for each child, or they are just not eating what I make. I prefer my children to have a good start with a healthy breakfast, so I have been opting to make them what they want. Now I am not saying that they are getting "junk"...lol...we are slowly switching to a more whole foods approach but variety is more of the issue. My Middle A will eat Oatmeal EVERY.SINGLE.DAY. which is a GOOD thing, however I know that oatmeal can cause some digestion issues and decided to look into a different method of making them. Along came the idea of soaking them. Wow! Weird? Really? That's what I thought when I first read about it, but as I started doing more research about soaking grains it started to make a lot of sense. This Monday was the first time I made oats that were soaked and they were AWESOME. I used the recipe from this site and added some chopped apple, cinnamon, brown sugar and butter. Everyone loved it, except little A...he took one bite and the texture was just not happening for him...2 outta 3 children happy is great, so its a keeper.

We also had a GREEN SMOOTHIE. Yes, a green smoothie. LOL. Don't knock it till you try it ;)

Here's what I put in ours (just add it all to the blender):

• About 8 ounces plain Kefir
• 5 oz of frozen organic Strawberries
• Honey to taste (maybe a tbsp)
• about 1/2 cup apple juice
• And topped it all off with ....*drumroll please* BABY SPINACH! Yup, baby spinach leaves. I just added enough to fill the blender. If it gets too thick just add some more apple juice to thin it out a little.

The result:






Haha...No pics of Middle A, her hair wasn't done yet ;) BUT she LOVED it and was so eager to drink it because it was GREEN. We drank this smoothie as a mid-morning snack after our Soaked Oatmeal breakfast. I will share some different recipe as we try them. I have lots of collard greens in the garden and am going to try to use them this way as well.



Part 2 (Tuesday's breakfast)

I think I have shared a soaked bread recipe before but if you haven't tried this bread recipe, I highly recommend it. I didn't want to make 4 loaves this time so I quartered the recipe. I had it soak over night in my bread machine pan, that way I could just add the rest of the ingredients and stick it on my bread machine's dough cycle ;) Even with tweaking the recipe a bit, it still came out woderfully! Next time, I won't be so lazy and will make all 4 loaves, but instead of baking them all at once, I will just freeze the dough and bake fresh as Laura Lee suggested to me my last baking day :D Anyways, we had this bread toasted with some scrambled eggs and apple slices on the side. I try to alternate our breakfasts throughout the week and provide lots of variety wherever I can. This week is a little different as I am trying to NOT go to the grocery store and just use up what we have...so far so good!

Tomorrow, I will share Part 3, Wednesdays Breakfast and here's a hint....I'm using up some pumpkin that I had in the freezer from a huge one we received this past summer.