I’ve been absent for the past year from blogging, and although I’ve missed it, I’ve needed the time away.  It has been a very long year.  This year has included putting in for adoption and going through the roller coaster ride that goes along with this, then in the middle of it all, finding out we were blessed by God with our second child (I became pregnant in February), and then the roller coaster that goes along with pregnancy.  In addition to the other stuff that goes a long with life.  Our little son, Vincent Joseph, was born 3 weeks early in October, and we’ve been enjoying our beautiful little family that God has given us.  But it’s been busy!

Anyways, as I said, I’ve missed blogging, so once again, I hope to make a more regular appearance.

Moving on, as you can imagine, schedules with a newborn in the house are a bit messy at the moment and so I’ve had to cultivate some new habits in order to make sure that we are able to keep some sort of normalcy, especially when it comes to providing my family with healthy, nutritious meals.  I’ll speak about lunch and supper another time, but right now I thought I’d share my ideas for breakfast.

Because it’s very challenging for me and my husband to drag ourselves out of bed in the mornings, never mind think about cooking a healthy breakfast, I’ve started preparing breakfast the night before as part of our end of day routine.  I’ve found some great breakfast ideas and recipes for oatmeal (both hot and cold) that I wanted to share with you as they’ve been a lifesaver for my family.  Here they are:

1. Crock Pot Pumpkin Gingerbread Steel Cut Oats – This is my absolute favourite!!!  So delicious!!!  There are other oatmeal recipes you can cook in your slow cooker, but this one is my all time favourite.  I find it’s best cooked for about 5 hours so that it doesn’t get too dry.  The best thing about this one is that you can keep the leftovers in the fridge and just microwave a bowl of it whenever you’d like.  It keeps well for about a week and is super easy to make taste fresh again.  I microwave the amount I’d like for about 1 minute, then add a bit of milk, stir and microwave for another minute.  Or if you have time, you can do it in a pot on the stove with a bit of added milk.  I really can’t recommend this one highly enough.
2. Overnight Oats – This one is my husband’s favourite.  So quick and easy.  There are different versions, but here’s ours for one serving: 1/2 cup of whole oats (not quick cooking), 1 cup of milk (almond, coconut, or regular), then you add what you’d like.  Nuts, raisins, coconut, sunflower or pumpkins seeds, chia seeds (super good), cinnamon, pumpkin spice, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, brown sugar, maple syrup, cocoa powder, vanilla etc.  My favourite is cinnamon (I always use cinnamon) with vanilla, then in the morning I add 1 tsp of peanut butter and 1/2 mashed banana.  Sooo yummy!!
3. Boiled Eggs with Toast –  Boil the eggs the night before and throw them in the fridge.  Then even if you decide to eat something else for breakfast, you can make a nice egg salad sandwich with these, or eat them as a snack later on.  For the toast, we use sprouted grain with peanut butter to add a bit of extra protein and fibre.  Very delicious and quick.
4. Pancakes – On the weekend I’ll double (or triple) my recipe for pancakes and then freeze the extras.  I freeze them for about 30 minutes on a cookie sheet and then once they’re frozen, throw them into a freezer bag.  This is also a quick breakfast and easy to take with you on the road if you have to be out the door quickly.  I microwave for a couple of minutes and then for my 3 year old daughter, I cut into slices and put in a little baggie.  She likes them and can eat them on the car.  If you’re wondering, I don’t do this often, but after long nights followed by morning doctors appointments, I’ve had to do this once or twice.  I imagine it might get me to morning Mass at some point when things become a bit more normal for us also.   If you’d like to try making pancakes from scratch, here’s the recipe that I use:  Fluffy Pancakes posted on Allrecipes.com (one of my favourite recipe websites).  For this recipe I use spelt flour or whole grain flour and I usually skip the salt and forget the butter.  I imagine you could freeze waffles also.

There you go.  Since Vincent was born, these have been our go-to breakfasts and they’ve been great.  I hope that you find them useful.

Do you have any ideas for fast morning breakfasts?  I’d love to hear them!

God bless,
Lucero