Managing Morning Madness – Breakfast

Last time I targeted tips for getting out of the house. This time, I’m only going to look at one topic: breakfast.

Have a breakfast plan
Most moms I know have some sort of dinner menu plan (Side note: if you don’t make a menu plan and feel disorganized, email me about this and I’ll write an article about it.  This is the #1 thing a mom who desires to be more organized should do!).  I’ve always meal planned for dinner, even before kids.  But I will tell you this–things changed around my house when I started planning for breakfast.  I can’t tell you strongly enough how much this little thing has revolutionized my mornings. 

The first thing I did, which I started a few years ago, was to make a rotating plan.  In its most basic form, I had oatmeal five days a week, an egg dish one day and a pancake/waffle dish the other.  The week looked like this:

Monday, Tuesday: Oatmeal
Wednesday: Egg dish
Thursday, Friday: Oatmeal
Saturday: Pancakes
Sunday: Oatmeal

Eventually, as the kids got older, I added sugar cereal as their Saturday morning meal and went down to oatmeal four days, cereal one day, pancakes once and eggs once.

This plan worked for many years, until we all got a little tired of oatmeal.  So I looked around for some new recipes.  I selected recipes that I could make the night before. Now, I make breakfast when I’m making dinner.  I’ve found pancake and egg recipes that can be made and kept in the fridge overnight. I make protein-full breakfast cookies that we have on mornings when we need to be out of the house early.  I make yummy French toast, cooking a whole loaf at a time and freezing the extras.  Then I pull out a piece and cook it in the toaster on French Toast mornings. 

Breakfast planning has been the best thing I’ve done for our family schedule in years!  If you feel adventurous, try finding recipes that you can make the night before. If this isn’t feasible, just work on the breakfast menu a few days ahead.  It’s likely that just knowing what you’ll have will make the mornings run easier.

The other important aspect about breakfast is this: you want to select breakfast foods that fill and fuel.  Cereal is usually nothing but empty calories that load kids up to start but then causes their blood sugar to take a dive.  Select whole grain foods and a protein source that fills your kids and stabilizes their blood sugar.  Convenience foods like cereals and even many breakfast bars have very little nutritional benefits, loading them up on empty carbohydrates.  

If you’re battling morning moods (in them or in yourself), check what you’re having for breakfast. Foods too high in empty carbs (white flour, sugar, etc) and low in protein are the culprit. Even on our oatmeal mornings, I always make sure to serve it with a protein (we use Morning Star Vegetarian Sausage patties).  Likewise, an easy breakfast of yogurt can go even further if you add cottage cheese or tahini to the yogurt, upping the protein content.

If you aren’t eating filling foods, that may be the cause of the morning meltdowns. Cereal once or twice a week is okay (we have it every Saturday and if you’ve read my other blogs, on crazy days for dinner).  But you want that to be the exception; on a regular basis, you need to be fueling them with nutritious food that fills their bellies.  Convenience foods are that – convenient– but you may pay for the convenience with a messy morning meltdown.

So, plan your meals ahead of time and fuel them with filling foods!  Your mornings will begin to run better.  Join me next time when we take a look at two more tips for Managing Morning Madness!

-posted by Donna Venning, who enjoys her mornings much more now that she can answer her kids’ morning greeting, “What’s for breakfast, Mommy?” with an actual answer and not a grunt about “What?  You want breakfast again today?”