Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

My mother always told me breakfast was overrated and nice people did not eat before noon. My mother is not a morning person. She eats a piece of toast in the morning with her coffee.  If she is feeling wild and crazy, she eats toast with a little mayo and some tomato slices on it. My dad, on the other hand, is a baddy daddy until he has breakfast. He has gone from the two eggs, bacon, salt and butter on his toast, OJ, and coffee breakfast to a healthy cereal and a magnificent fruit plate breakfast. He makes it himself most mornings, and nothing happens until he has had breakfast.

Joe, not unlike my mom, moved slowly in the morning. He enjoyed pancakes and omelets on the weekend, but I would call the timing more of a very late brunch than a breakfast. Coffee first. Always.

Me? I love breakfast, especially if someone else is making it. My dad’s fruit plate is doubled when Cole and I visit. My mother usually rallies and whips some bacon up for her grandson and me, her only child. Before Joe bit it, we had a pretty good morning routine. Joe always made brunch on the weekends. On weekdays, I would fix Cole breakfast, and Joe would make Cole’s sammi for lunch (which is worth a whole other post entirely). I would handle the campers and help Cole get ready for school. Joe would sip his coffee, put the finishing touches on the sammi, and be ready to leave the house just in time to get Cole to school on time.  It worked. And then Joe died and screwed up our whole morning breakfast routine.

There are many ways I fall short when it comes to providing nutritionally for my child, but I have never sent him to school without breakfast of some sort. Some sort used to include a few too many Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonald’s drive-throughs, or 7-11 danishes, but we called it breakfast. If you serve orange juice with it,  it’s breakfast, and as you know, a day without a orange juice is a day without sunshine! So, we always drink our OJ in the morning. Wait, where was I before OJ took me on a tangent? Oh, I remember … since Joe screwed up my morning routine, breakfast has to be eaten in the car … unless I want to consider getting up at 5am and getting Cole up at 6am, and I don’t want to consider that option. So, we eat in the car.

Our car no longer brakes at Dunkin’ Donuts or McDonald’s. Cole and I both overdosed on convenience last year, so usually I manage to make an egg, bacon, and toast to be eaten on the road, or a breakfast burrito, or sometimes cereal. The kid who eats everything will not eat oatmeal. Please don’t suggest your special way of eating oatmeal. Cole will throw up if he eats oatmeal. Throw-up will not add to our ride to school. We both have orange juice because, living in Chicago, we need all the sunshine we can get. And since Cole has become a coffee drinker, we sometimes indulge in those little bottles of Starbucks or stop for coffee. I drink mine loaded with sugar and milk; Cole drinks his coffee with barely a packet of sugar.

This post has a point … just in case you were wondering.

Humdy dum de dum,

Humdy dum de dum

Ready?

Introducing my Newest Breakfast Creation…“Ohh’s,” “Ahh’s,”  loud applause is appreciated

Wait!! I forgot to ask Do you breakfast or Don’t you breakfast….that is the question I have for you?  Odd Loves Company! Oh, and I want to encourage you to make this Dutch Baby. Because baby if I can make it–anyone can make it! Quick! Easy! and only a few ingredients (and not one of the ingredients is Walnut oil but if you want to learn about radishes and read a recipe that includes Walnut Oil–here is a good one–in defense of  the Radish)

Lets try this again! Introducing my Newest Breakfast Creation…Cue  LOUD APPLAUSE.

This is my Dutch Baby, straight out of the oven. The recipe calls for a “pie pan”; my pie pan was stolen by a low-down, no-good, pie-pan-thief-scoundrel (I think), but lucky for me, the pie-thief-scoundrel had no use for my tart pan. The tart pan worked. Although shape of my Dutch Baby is rather creative.

The recipe calls for berries, but I had bananas, and we love bananas. We also think everything is better with pecans, so I added pecans. And, well, I know the recipe called for powdered sugar, but my boy loves hitting the sauce, so we opted for maple syrup

TADA! Cole is grinning down at his Dutch Baby pancake. How does one eat a Dutch Baby pancake with syrup and fruit while driving to school? Because, well, as you know, my kid now drives everywhere these days. He waits until we hit a looonnnggg, red light, and then takes several bites.  It’s a little tricky, but my bumper sticker reads: My son is a multi-tasker!

O.K. Fine. Cole does not drive and eat his Dutch Baby; that would be irresponsible.  I drive and he eats while somehow managing not to get sticky. Cole, like his grandmother, never gets sticky. I did not get this gene; I look at syrup and I am immediately sticky. In fact, I reached over to help myself to one bite and dropped it on Cole’s leg. He was not happy. I thought it was rather amusing. Well, I did. Stone me.

Cole declared his breakfast (OMG), “Oh, Mom, GOOD!” and suggested that I remind you if you are not trained in the fine art of car dining you should eat your Dutch Baby before leaving home.

 

Click here for recipe for the Dutch Baby.

Thanks to Little Momma and Company for sharing the recipe!