Mom on the Run for Feb. 16, 2012

Freeze your favorites for quick breakfast

We Colvins are not morning people. Well, I’m sure that some Colvins are, but this particular Ascension Parish branch is definitely not.

We’re more of the “wake up, eat breakfast, take a nap” kind of people, even though my husband has to be at work very early and there’s a toddler involved. This tendency was previously exacerbated by my decadelong night job.

Now that I’m on more sane hours, breakfast has moved from, well, lunch, to a challenge to be conquered.

The 2-year-old wants Cheerios (what else?). My husband wants an enormous pile of eggs, bacon, grits and biscuits (what else?) or nothing at all. I want something I can prepare half asleep, because that’s exactly what I am.

What this usually devolved into was Ainsley refusing food at home and eating breakfast at day care, John eating nothing, me having a bowl of cereal or yogurt, and breakfast becoming a meal reserved for the weekend, when there’s time to fix everything that everyone wants. This could not continue.

First, I tried the usual prepared foods, like yogurt or cereal. My husband detests yogurt, even with a fancified, dessert-sounding name, and will only eat cereal as a snack. Oatmeal, as far as he’s concerned, is a cookie ingredient to be masked by chocolate. Yeah, I know.

Then came the freezer foods, like sausage biscuits or burritos. I can’t pronounce half the ingredients on the package and they don’t quite fit into our budget.

One day as I was toasting a frozen waffle, it occurred to me that I make a darn tasty biscuit, a palatable pancake and a fine muffin, with fruit or without. Why don’t I freeze those things, and we can toast them for breakfast?

All of those breakfast foods previously passed both the picky toddler and meat-and-potatoes husband tests, and I already cook for the week on Sunday. An extra pan of biscuits or a few more Saturday morning pancakes wouldn’t take up too much time. Score!

I first tried biscuits (similar to the Cheese Biscuit recipe I previously wrote about; you can cook them with or without cheese) and it worked like a charm. I did leave the biscuits a little undercooked so they wouldn’t scorch in the toaster oven, and I avoid putting them in the microwave because they tend to get rubbery when nuked.

Pancakes also worked great, with the added bonus that they’re more portable and less crumbly, good for eating in the car, and I could make smaller, Ainsley-sized ones.

Also, like muffins, I could shove fruit in them and both toddler and husband would eat them without complaint. I’m not really sure why that works, and as long as they’re eating fruit, I won’t ask questions.

Muffins and pancakes are also a great way to use up fruit that’s about to spoil. I’m looking at you, bananas.