Quick Breakfast

The boys started school this past week. I have given myself two goals for this school year:

1. I will be at the bus stop when they get off the bus in the afternoon.

2. I will make them at least one hot breakfast a week.

The boys get on the bus at 8:00AM, and get off the bus around 6:00PM.

It’s a long day for someone so little, so I wanted to send them off with a full feeling in their stomachs. It has been a challenge to find ways to make a quick, hot breakfast that toddlers will eat when they would be happy with a daily dose of the marshmallow cereal that Grandma sent from the States.

I had discovered earlier that you can make pancakes in the sandwich maker (my new favorite kitchen appliance), and that you could refrigerate the batter for up to a week, so making just a few pancakes at a time.

I also discovered, via some comments on facebook, that you could microwave an egg mixed with a little milk in a small bowl and have perfect scrambled eggs. It was only about 2 minutes in the microwave, and they come out in the perfect shape to use for an egg sandwich (although we ate them ‘plain’). The boys love ‘em, so they’ve now become a regular on the breakfast rotation.

I think my next goal should be preparing quick, good-for-you dinners for just the two of them. Jeff and I usually eat a large meal at the lunch hour (around 2:00pm here in Spain) and then sometimes I’ll reheat the leftovers for the boys for dinner and we eat something light later on (around 10:00ish). Lately the boys have been having a lot of white rice mixed with tomato sauce, a Spanish staple. They do like this meal….but it has very little actual nutrition.

Goal for the next week (or whenever I actually get up the initiative): discover actual nutritious dinner meals that don’t take very long, and that they will eat…