Breakfast Time Savers & Hacks

Get Organized: November 2019

By Jhoneé Fillmore

School Day vs. Weekend

The typical school morning is face paced. Many tasks must be done by the kiddos and adults for a successful school arrival.

Let the family know in advance which breakfast items are available for school mornings versus weekend mornings. At our house, weekend mornings are for making french toast, baking muffins, making waffles or pancakes from scratch or something as simple as cooking bacon. School mornings however need to happen much more quickly so I limit the menu to: scrambled or fried eggs, frozen waffles, frozen pancakes, cereal, toast, instant oatmeal, yogurt, hard-boiled eggs, smoothies, bagels or fruit.

Freeze It

Waffles and Pancakes

Did you notice that I put frozen waffles and frozen pancakes in my school day approved breakfast list? Well, these are items that I have cooked in advance from scratch. I make a few batches of these on the weekends and stick them in the freezer. On school mornings, the kids like to pull them from the freezer and pop them into the toaster. In a quick minute they have homemade items to eat. And yes, they are still delicious. A further time saver that I use is that I keep on hand a container of the dry portion of the waffle and pancake mix.

Yogurt Sticks

We love to freeze our yogurt sticks! The two ways that we eat them are: One, we pull a yogurt stick from the freezer in the morning when we are placing lunch containers into lunch boxes. By lunch time the yogurt is still very cold and completely thawed. Two, my kids enjoy eating the yogurt sticks straight from the freezer as a frozen treat when we are at home. A great way to cool off.

Edamame

Another favorite treat with a couple different scenarios is edamame. One, we place them right from the freezer into the children or adult’s lunch containers. By lunchtime they are thawed completely but cold. Two, snack on this halfway frozen treat while at home or driving in the car. No need to thaw completely as eating them halfway frozen is part of the excitement.

Blueberries

The frozen blueberries my kids will snack on right from the freezer. We also like to put the blueberries directly from the freezer into a bowl and pour plain yogurt on top. In about a minute the yogurt freezes onto the blueberries to create a healthy dessert with an awesome balance of sweet and tart. This qualifies as a great mid day snack or an after dinner treat.

Lessen the Sweetener

My children are huge fans of items like french toast, waffles and pancakes. They are equally big on covering them in agave to jazz them up. I am not a huge fan of a lot of sweetening so I portion how much agave my kids can use. I love the tiny containers that are designed for salad dressing and condiments to use for this task. (See the photograph of waffles and mini agave containers). My boys think having their own agave container is pretty cool. Another way to lessen the amount of agave they use is to mix in a little water into their agave containers. This trick not only lessens the amount of sweetener consumed but also stretches the life of your agave bottle.