Breakfast Revisited

I blogged last week about planning breakfasts that were healthy and fast to make our mornings smoother.  After I ran last weekend, I'm taking a mini exercise vacation so I have a few extra hours each day.  (I'm not totally being lazy.  Olivia's favorite teacher at Child Watch is on vacation this week and I wasn't sure how she'd do without her.)  So last night I went through two cookbooks and pulled a few breakfast ideas.  They had to fit within a few parameters:

1. My kids will eat them.
2. They must be freezable.
3. They must be fast.
4. They must be healthy, i.e. more than just empty calories or sugary snacks.

This may sound simple, but it wasn't.  My idea of fast isn't most cookbook author's idea of fast.  Really, I'm not a morning person.  Really.  So something that can be ready and eaten in 10 minutes is what I'm looking for.  My little Vincer has a rough time with breakfast.  He's not hungry when he first gets up, but he doesn't get up early enough to be awake long enough before it's time to go to get hungry, so things that are portable work well for him.  The 7 minute drive in the car is usually enough time for him to down his breakfast and be ready for school (general with food on his face, but that's why I carry baby wipes in my purse.)

Look at this hair!  He's a smaller version of me in the morning.

So the recipes I found are basically all pancakes--which is fine by my kids.  

1. Pink pancakes that are made with beets and ricotta cheese (giving calcuim, veggies, fruit and protein all in pancake form),
2. cottage cheese pancakes (one we've never tried from Weelicious)
3. Pumpkin Waffles (also something from Weelicious)
4. Breakfast Pizza Pockets (this guy's not online),
5. Bacon and Cheese Waffles, (the link is only for cheese waffles, the book has bacon added as well.) Apple Vanilla Pancakes (no recipe for this online)

The Breakfast Pizza pockets are my wild card because they need about 20 minutes to bake, including preheating time.  Those are for the rare days when I'm up and moving with enough time to actually have this much leeway.  All of these can be made a head and frozen, then defrosted in the microwave or in the toaster.  This means that the big kids can (in theory) make them for themselves, although that will never happen because they have no concept of time in the morning.  (It was 11:00 on a Saturday and Ellie asked me if they had school.) They're also almost all something that I could defrost and bring in the car for Vince and Olivia or throw in my gym bag to eat after I run.  I'm happy with this plan, so far.  I'm thinking about firing up the griddle and the waffle iron this Saturday, and making everything then.  We can sample some of them for lunch on Saturday and freeze the rest for the coming week.  I'll let you know how it works.  I like the idea of feeding them a full breakfast and I'm hoping everything goes according to plan.  Something tells me I'll work for hours on Saturday and no on will like any of them and it will all be for nothing.  C'est la vie. (Or more appropriately, c'est MA vie!)