When the 11 year old makes dinner....

....we have pancakes!  He made them about 90% by himself.  Happy son, happy Mama.

Whole Wheat Corn Waffles

This is another breakfast recipe I found at The Happy Housewife. Love her website!

Heat up waffle iron while mixing batter. In the original recipe she says to mix the wet ingredients first and then stir in the dry, but I did the opposite so I could more easily adjust the addition of the milk. I'm glad I did, as I used just slightly over 3 cups of milk, rather than 4. I just kept checking the consistency of the batter as I added.

Mix in large bowl:

3 cups whole wheat flour (freshly ground or store bought - can also mix whole wheat and white)
1 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 T baking powder
1 1/2 tsp salt

Add to dry mixture:

4 eggs
1/2 cup melted butter
1/2 cup oil
3-4 cups milk (add milk slowly to adjust - if using white flour you will use less milk. Batter should be pourable but not runny)



Pour mixture onto hot waffle iron and cook.


Voila!


The children ate theirs with syrup, but I put vanilla yogurt and blueberries on mine. YUM!


Freeze leftovers and re-heat in the microwave or toaster!

Homemade Granola

Another recipe from The Happy Housewife, and another winner! The first batch I made didn't even get used for breakfast by the kids ~ it was munched on as a snack until the bowl was completely licked clean! (I did manage to sprinkle some on a bowl of yogurt for breakfast)

3 cups dry oatmeal
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup honey
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup wheat germ (didn't have so left this out)



First melt the butter in a 3 quart saucepan over medium heat. Add the honey and salt and stir well. Turn off heat and add the oatmeal and wheat germ (if using). Stir well, then pour the mixture onto a greased cookie sheet. Try to spread the mixture out as flat and evenly as possible.


Bake at 375 for 10 minutes (I baked mine for 15). It will be a golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool. Store in an airtight container.


GREAT breakfast or snack, easy to make, and very popular with the children. I plan to make repeatedly!

Bull's Eyes for Breakfast!

This is a recipe I got from The Happy Housewife, and it was a real winner!

Need:

slices of bread
butter
eggs

Put a dollop of butter in hot frying pan to melt. Cut a circle or a heart or whatever shape you desire out of a slice of bread, and lay the bread and the cutout piece in the pan to begin frying. Break an egg into the cutout so that it cooks along with the bread. Cook about 2-3 minutes on one side, then flip and cook an additional minute on the other.


Serve the bull's eye with its little cutout piece and enjoy!

Breakfast Menus

I made a small goal last weekend to not have cereal for breakfast once this week. Cereal is quick and easy, and there's nothing horribly wrong with it (we rarely buy the sugary kind), but with 5 children we can go through a LOT of cereal in a very short time. I figured that I could probably make healthier breakfasts more cheaply, and a bonus is that we could save money on milk too. Hence, the goal. Here are my breakfast menus for the week:

Monday

Chocolate Chip Pancakes, bananas



Tuesday

Applesauce Bread, yogurt, sausage

Wednesday

Oatmeal, sausage

Thursday

French toast sticks

Friday

Breakfast pizzas

Saturday

Cereal!! The children now have a new appreciation for cereal. :-)

Breakfast Pizza

Or homemade Egg McMuffins!

I saw this recipe for breakfast pizza on the happy housewife blog, and thought it would be easy and fun to make. I thought I would try to cook everyone's scrambled egg in a nice little circle (like at McDonald's) so it would easily stay on the bottom bun, so I came up with the idea to use canning jar rings as "holders" for the scrambled egg mixture to cook inside of. Well, don't go rushing off to buy canning jar rings for this purpose because it didn't work. The egg mixture leaked out of the bottom of the rings almost completely. So I just scrambled them like usual and most of the children put a top bun on the pizza to help hold the eggs in.


Layer on homemade buns:

sausage patty
scrambled egg
a touch of grated cheese

Eat with a top bun, or without, your choice.

Easy Peasy! All the children loved them and thought it was a fun breakfast!

Crockpot Baked Oatmeal Bars

We ran out of bars last week and I decided to try this crockpot baked oatmeal recipe from crockpot365 (and in case you've never visited Stephanie's blog, she was just on Good Morning America and posted about that experience on her blog today! Plus she has lots of fabulous recipes - check it out!). I normally buy a large box of Nutrigrain bars at Sam's Club and we eat them as snacks on Fridays during co-op. Co-op is a long morning and by the time we finish it has been about 4 1/2 hours since breakfast. So during second hour all students are allowed to eat a snack. Because of the $500 food budget challenge this month, I didn't want to go buy more Nutrigrain bars, and this was just the excuse I needed to try Stephanie's recipe.

Crockpot Baked Oatmeal

3 cups rolled (not instant) oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 T flax meal (optional, and I left this out because I didn't have any)
1 cup milk
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup dried fruit (I left this out because I wasn't sure my kids would like it)

It was with high anticipation that I combined all the ingredients into the crockpot, achieving the described consistency of slightly runny (not goopy) oatmeal.



I cooked on low for 3-5 hours (my time was almost exactly 4 hours) and then checked for doneness. Stephanie said it would be done when the edges are brown and beginning to crust like this:


Yep! Edges were crusting and a knife came out clean from the center. It was done! I let it cool for 2-3 hours before attempting to cut. That is where it got tricky. I don't know if I did something wrong or if it is supposed to be crumbly, but it was not bar-like, it was more like oatmeal cake. It made it a little trickier to eat than I had envisioned (we really needed spoons) but the taste MORE than made up for the crumbs. It was as delicious as Stephanie said it would be!!! This tastes hearty and not as sweet as store bought bars, but it's not bland. My husband described it as, "knowing you are eating something that's really good for you, and liking it."

I gave each child two pieces of this "cake" in a tupperware container along with a few chocolate chips and slices of banana. Oh yes, and a spoon. :-) It was a delicious snack that all but son L enjoyed!


Verdict: My husband wants me to make it with raisins next time. I am already imagining all the various dried fruit options I can experiment with in this recipe!

Sweet Potato Pancakes

Much of my meal planning right now consists of buying whatever veggies are on sale super cheap and then figuring out later how to cook them. Tonight we had such a meal. It was delicious and a hit with everyone! I LOVE when that happens! I went searching for a way to incorporate sweet potatoes as the main part of our meal, and found this recipe for sweet potato pancakes on allrecipes.com.

3/4 pound sweet potatoes (I cooked 3 large ones)
1 1/2 cups flour
3 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
2 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cups milk
1/4 cup butter, melted

Put sweet potatoes in a pan of boiling water and cook until tender but firm, about 15 minutes (I found I should have boiled them much longer - they were soft on the outside but very hard to mash). Drain and immediately immerse in cold water to loosen skins. Drain, remove skins, chop, and mash.

In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg. Mix mashed sweet potatoes, eggs, milk and butter in a separate medium bowl. Blend sweet potato mixture into the flour mixture to form a batter.

Cook pancakes in whatever method you normally use.



Here's what I did differently and what I would do differently next time:

I didn't cook the sweet potatoes long enough to be easily mashed, so the pancake batter turned out to be fairly lumpy with small chunks of sweet potato clearly visible. This visual was not a happy thing for my children.



Once they were flipped it was a little better, because the chunks were not visible. They loved the taste, just not the chunks. So I will cook longer and mash better next time.


Also, I doubled the recipe to make sure we had enough for our larger sized family. This would have meant 3 cups of flour. Instead I added 2 cups of flour and 1 cup of oats (I used regular oats, but you could use quick cook or whatever you have). In addition to all the ingredients listed above, I also added 1 tsp of cinnamon and 1 tsp of pure vanilla extract. I also added the milk slowly, stopping when I felt the batter was the right consistency. This turned out to be less then the called for amount of milk.

They were thick and "hearty" (as my hubby said) and very, very good. Definitely a keeper!