If you knew that what I made here was a variation on Raw Veggie Cereal, you were right! Lots of you did, and Mary guessed correctly first.

It was quite a long time ago when a reader named Ruth, assuming this might be something right up my alley, sent me the recipe for this cereal. We like healthy things ’round these parts. Strange, healthy things, even. But the recipe for Raw Veggie Cereal that she sent just didn’t sit right with me. There was no way it could taste okay, I thought. Not a chance in you know where that even my kids would eat it.

But here’s where I admit something that is hard for me to admit, being a first born perfectionist and all:

I was wrong.

This cereal is, unbelievably enough, really good. And here’s how to make it:

Chop the pecans and carrots in a food processor. Pulse until all they are chopped into small pieces. Add the cauliflower, broccoli and apple and pulse again until all ingredients are chopped into pieces as small as you desire.

Scoop a generous serving into a bowl; add cinnamon and milk. Neither you, your children, nor your husband (If you can convince him to at least try it!) will have any idea what this ridiculously healthy raw cereal is actually made from. Especially if you chop yours up finer than I did with mine. And oh, yummy yum!

Okay, so just being honest here, Big Mac looks at me like I’ve lost my ever loving mind when I try to serve it to him. But the other three gobble it up. I hate broccoli, and even I love it. My husband declined to try it. But seriously, we really think it’s good. Even though it looks really, really strange.

A few thoughts: Pulsing longer than I did to get the pieces of fruit, vegetables and nuts much smaller (like the size of couscous) makes the raw cereal more palatable to kids. I just got lazy yesterday. Also, if you make more than the recipe calls for, make sure to keep the ratios the same. It’s tastiest that way, in our opinion.

Also, Nuggey prefers his raw cereal with other cereal. His favorite? Kashi GoLean. So that’s how he eats it. You may notice that I added some dried fruit to our cereal yesterday. Also, I haven’t tried it yet, but I bet coconut would be a super yummy addition, too! We pour ice cold raw cow’s milk over our raw veggie cereal, but to go completely vegan, you could also use almond milk. I love making almond milk, and I’m reminded now that I haven’t made it in a while, either! Here’s how:

Put all ingredients in a food processor and blend until it looks like milk! Strain out the pulp (using a strainer with small holes first and cheesecloth second [and third, if you want]). Refrigerate milk. Drink or pour over cereal. It will keep for about 3 days.

What can I say? I love woodland creature food.

With winter’s winds already whispering promises of her sure and steady arrival to the Frozen Tundra our family calls home, hot cereals fill our children’s bellies with growing frequency these days.

This morning, as well as yesterday, our family ate barley for breakfast. This grain reminds us of our beloved steel cut oats and is quickly becoming a household favorite, though typically not considered a breakfast item. What can I say? Our family prefers to march to the beat of our own drummer. I made the breakfast barley in much the same way as our oatmeal: Overnight in the crockpot, so the goodness in a bowl is wonderfully warm when dawn breaks.

A bunch of pinches of cinnamon added to 1 part uncooked pearled barley (which is insanely inexpensive and can be found at your supermarket with the bags of dried beans and split peas and is also depicted in the furthest to the left glass jar in this post) and 3 parts water worked nicely for us, cooked all night on warm.

Served with butter and honey, as Big Mac demonstrates in the top photograph, or with frozen raspberries and cream, like Nuggey is holding below, this hearty, nutritious, delicious breakfast is already a hit with our family.

And perhaps it might be with yours. Give it a shot!

Finally! The recipe for my oft mentioned steel cut oats in the crockpot. An overnight sensation resulting in a piping hot, cooked to perfection breakfast in the morning. I make this all the time around here. It’s just too perfect of a breakfast solution for one and all. Mostly for one. Ahem, me.

But the all love it, too. It’s healthy, to boot. Here’s what I do:

Serve with butter, strawberries and cream, a drizzle of molasses, or honey and milk.

Enjoy!

Getting your children to want to eat their fruits and veggies may never have been easier! (Or more fun or more colorful!)

Yesterday, after a long, messy, exciting afternoon of blending, mixing, pureeing and flipping, my MSC and I had this rainbow of pancakes to show for our efforts. And a very messy kitchen. And lots of batter covered spoons. And I had precisely four batter covered children. About fifteen minutes later, I was the proud owner of four batter covered, full tummied children who had consumed their fruits and veggies for the day.

(And then I gave them all baths and did jammies and, well, if you read my last post, you know what happened after that. But that’s water under the bridge all over the dry jammies at this point!)

So, let me back up a bit. Whilst I’ve been going crazy with creating MSU* for beet puree lately, I’ve been reading the comments on my blog. My friend Katie mentioned something about healthy rainbow pancakes. I was all, “Dude, what did you just say!? Healthy rainbow pancakes!?” It was possibly the most brilliant concept I’d ever heard! Sure, I knew about rainbow cake and have since been informed that food coloring infused pancakes have already been invented (Much like I learned about waterpillows yesterday!). But healthy rainbow pancakes? She had my attention. I was impressed at how she blended the two concepts together. Y’all know how much I love color and health food is right up our alley. Her idea seemed to blend these loves together brilliantly and I was dying to try it out for our children. But how? Katie hadn’t even made healthy rainbow pancakes yet.

*Many Small Uses

What’s a girl to do? I marched through the aisles of the grocery store the other day, holding hands and singing harvest songs with my clean, well dressed children dragging my hummus stained, whining children through the store, hissing bribes about swinging through the bank to get suckers if they would only stop dragging their fingertips along the fronts of all the boxes of cereal, and kept my eyes open for fruit and veggies I thought would color some pancakes well in a perfectly fresh and healthy way.

Suffice it to say that there was a lot of trial and error yesterday when we made our pancakes. To save you from such a fate, in case you are traveling in an RV around the country* and don’t have time to puree fruits and vegetables that won’t work end up working or something, I’ll tell how exactly how we ended up making ours.

*not that I know anyone who is planning to do that, or anything!

You can layer leftover pancakes between wax paper and freeze for easy consumption later (and idea I’m pretty sure I also learned from Katie literally years ago!), or spread one with almond or peanut butter and honey and top with another pancake to make cold sandwiches! Our MSC love leftover pancake sandwiches; I make them all the time.

Oh and one final note. I had our MSC help me with this for the fun and learning of it all. Also, as I mentioned on my blog a number of years ago, I am not a big fan of hiding healthy food into meals. I wanted our children to be a part of creating and mixing yesterday. Truly, I would love for our children to desire to eat healthy, knowing how nutritious and delicious it can be, not to be tricked into eating their veggies. I’m sure there is a time and a place for this, but for me, I don’t care for the notion on a large scale. After all, when they are grown, they will have to make their own food choices. I don’t think anyone is going to be helping to trick them then! So anyway, that is my take on the whole hiding foods thing. Our children knew exactly what was going into each pancake, since they were making them! Big Mac loves spinach, as a matter of fact, so that was the first one he wanted to taste!

I hope your family has fun trying these out and enjoying them!

Stop, drop and roll try this raw veggie cereal. I mean it. I adapted it from a great recipe a blog reader named Ruth sent to me. I want you to make it now. Get over how crazy it sounds and just do it. You’ll thank me later.

At least, I hope you will.

Chop the pecans and carrots in a food processor. Pulse until all they are chopped into small pieces. Add the cauliflower, broccoli and apple and pulse again until all ingredients are about the size of couscous.

Scoop a generous serving in a cereal bowl, add cinnamon and almond milk. Neither you, your children, nor your husband will have any idea what this ridiculously healthy raw cereal is made from. And yummy yum!

Oh, and if you don’t have almond milk on hand, just make your own. I mean, please.

Put all ingredients in a food processor and blend until it looks like milk! Strain out the pulp and refrigerate milk. It will keep for about 3 days.

Oh, and while you’re at it…

Please stop, drop and roll ignore the fact that: a) this post has no photos and b) that I have not picked a winner from the last Name That Photo contest. We’ve been gone (park, Community Center, outdoor Splash Pad, garage sale) all day and I won’t have time to blog again until approximately 67 years from now.

Or maybe just until later tonight.

Thanks for your patience.

I used to think I hated to cook. I now know that is not true. Rather, I just typically hate to cook from recipes. I know that makes me weird. I’m okay with that. It’s not that I think there aren’t fantastic recipes out there. I know there are! I am just too busy of a mama/blogger/wife/photographer/sweeper of crumbs/fixer of couscous to justify taking the time to find/read/follow them.

I love meal ideas. But not measurements. Not thumbing through cookbooks can make it challenging to come up with healthy new menu items, though. But I am forever searching the archives in my brain for concoctions to cook up. And reading my comments to get ideas. Yes, I do read them all! Every time! It was a reader who actually gave me the idea to use juice in couscous and I came up with my own recipe.

Sometimes they don’t work out. But sometimes they do!

Case in point: MckPancakes.

I have been working on this idea of my own for a while now, and I hit the nail on the head yesterday when I made these for lunch. I loved them. And our Many Small Children loved them. Plus they are healthy. Success, no? I actually took out a pen and paper and wrote down exactly what I did. Kind of like a recipe. Just for you. You’re welcome.

Bon appetit!

MckPancakes

2 c. regular old pancake mix

1 1/2 c. water

1/2 c. flaxseed meal

1/2 c. almond butter

1 banana

1 tsp. flaxseed oil

1 egg

1/3 c. plain, whole yogurt

1/4 c. honey

dash cinnamon

In a large mixing bowl, blend pancake mix, flaxseed meal and cinnamon. Set aside.

In blender, combine almond butter, oil, egg, honey, yogurt and banana. Blend until smooth.

Add blended mixture and water to the dry mix. Stir together well. Make pancakes out of the batter.

I hunked the leftover pancakes from yesterday’s lunch up into triangle shaped wedges and saved them in a container in our refrigerator. For snack today, I served them cold with a drizzle of honey. The pancakes are so thick and dense, you and your family will think you’re eating some kind of dessert bread. They would be very easy to take along as a snack, or a full meal, on a outing, too.

Enjoy! And please do come back and tell me what you thought of them!

Oh, and come back tonight, or just keep your cell phone on if you follow me on Twitter, because I am going to do another contest via Twitter once my children are in bed. With a $20 gift card to Target on the line! Fun, fun.