Image by Minal Photography
What's that saying? Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dine like a pauper. I'm not sure we have time in our house to breakfast like kings, we're mostly too busy locating book bags, brushing teeth and discussing the all-important question of which shoe goes on which foot.
Breakfast may be guilty of being a bit boring in our house, as I suspect it is for many. I asked people on my facebook page what their kids eat and the resounding answer was toast, cereal and some form of English breakfast/pancakes at the weekend when time is more abundant. For what it's worth my kids mainly eat cereal followed by toast, fruit and/or yoghurt. Pretty wholesome in my book.
Or not. I recently went shopping for a particular cereal as a friend and her son were coming to stay for the weekend. Her little one also has a nut allergy so I of course made a point of checking the ingredients of both the real deal and also the own label alternative (well I am the 'bargain queen' after all). The wholesome looking own-label-knock-off listed no nuts but did include sugar, salt and indeed all manner of chemical things I didn't like the sound of. I switched back to the branded version with gusto which just contained, well, wheat.
So it felt very topical when a few days later the folks at Organix asked me to take part in their #NoJunk challenge, because, as much as I might have thought breakfast is a wholesome affair in my house, it basically isn't. I've made a very late new year's resolution to start checking out what's in the food my children (and my husband and I) eat - with a war declared on junk. This isn't about not baking treats like cakes and biscuits, in fact homemade treats - where I know what's in the cake/biscuit/flapjack, are most definitely on the menu. What's not, are the off the cuff purchases where junk could easily be hiding. In short, I'm going to be studying labels before putting my hands in my pocket.
Here's a no junk recipe that takes about three minutes from grabbing the ingredients to serving. Perfect for busy mornings and a break from the usual cereal and toast.
Ingredients:
Serves one, scale up as required
15g rolled oats
130mls milk
Two tbsp natural yoghurt
55g frozen red berries
½ banana
Place all the ingredients into a blender, then blitz until all the berries have disappeared. Serve immediately either as it is, over ice or with the rest of the banana for dipping. (You can use a stick blender and measuring jug to blitz the smoothie if you don't own a blender.)
There are lots more recipes over at Recipes from a Normal Mum, written by Holly Bell.