Strawberry Ice Cream Chia Pudding Parfaits

2 / 13 / 19

Please tell me I’m not the only one who loves whipping up on-theme food for my kiddos on holidays and special occasions. I know, it’s a little bit nerdy and over the top, but I love it so much. Last Valentine’s Day I made the kids these strawberry ice cream chia pudding parfaits and oh my word… You should have seen their little eyes light up when I set breakfast down in front of them!

Besides the fact that they’re both nutritious and super delicious, the thing I love about these ice cream chia pudding parfaits is that they’re a lot easier to make than they look. In fact, you can do most of the prep work the night before so they come together super quickly come morning.

First up, you’ll want to cut a bunch of strawberry hearts… Just cut the green leafy part of the strawberry off to create a ‘v’ shape at the top, then slice! You’ll want fairly thin hearts to place along the inside of the mason jars, so keep that in mind while slicing. If prepping these the night before, just pop them into an air-tight bag or container in the fridge. And while you’re at it, wash and dry a few blueberries and add them in there too.

Next up, your chia pudding. I have a couple of posts about chia pudding (our tropical version | our chocolate version), but if you haven’t tried it, you really must. It’s so unique and delicious and my kids just love it! To make it, pour 1 cup of coconut milk into a jar along with 3 tablespoons of chia seeds, 1 tablespoon of pure maple syrup, and a little splash of good vanilla. Shake it up like mad and then place it in the fridge overnight to thicken. If you can, give it a couple of extra shakes before going to bed for the night to help prevent clumping. If not, no worries – it’ll be fine either way.

Alright… Now for the part that has to be made in the morning… The strawberry ice cream! Or nice cream as it’s often called.

Chuck 3 frozen bananas, along with 5 big frozen strawberries and a splash of good vanilla, into a food processor. I find this works best if the frozen fruit has had just 5 minutes at room temperature, but you can do it straight from the freezer too. Basically, you just need to blend it like CRAZY. It’ll take a little while and will most likely require you stopping the food processor to scrape down the sides a few times, but keep going {past the chunky stage, past the mealy stage} until your bananas and strawberries are the consistency of soft serve. Mmmm… so good!

Now it’s time to assemble! Line a mason jar with your strawberry hearts simply by pressing them against the glass surface…

Then gently fill the jar about halfway full of chia pudding…

And generously top with strawberry ice cream.

Finish off the strawberry ice cream chia pudding parfaits with a strawberry heart and a few blueberries on top and breakfast (or snack) is served!

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Soft Nutritious Breakfast Cookies

1 / 30 / 172 / 1 / 17

Mmmm… cookies. And for breakfast no less!

These nutritious breakfast cookies have been on regular rotation in our house lately. I’ve been making a big batch on the weekend and pulling them out for easy breakfasts, snacks, and school lunches which has been such a treat. Both of the kids absolutely love them and gobble them up 3 at a time, which is absolutely fine by me! They’re jam-packed with good stuff – whole grains, fruit, veggies, and protein – and include absolutely no added sugar, which means I actually feel good about feeding my munchkins cookies – win!

Chunky Monkey Frozen Yogurt Bites

1 / 5 / 171 / 6 / 17

My Miss G… My goodness, she’s growing up. At the moment, she wants nothing more than to be a teenager. 16 is the magical age she talks about most and she just can’t wait to get there {ugh},. Of course this also means she wants to do everything very teenagerish too… She wants to read grown up books, wear grown up clothes, talk in a grown up way, and basically do everything on her own – including cooking. Her absolute favourite is ‘invent cooking’, which means pulling random ingredients out of the fridge and pantry to mix up mystery concoctions {and admittedly takes some letting go on my part}, but she’s also beginning to have quite a repertoire of actual recipes she can make on her own too. These chunky monkey frozen yogurt bites are easy peasey for her to make solo and they’re also a very favourite breakfast and snack. And the best part? We almost always have a jar of them in the freezer, which means that we always have something yummy and ready to eat when needed.

Bacon and Potato Egg Cups

8 / 31 / 169 / 13 / 16

Oh my goodness… I’ve been so bad about planning and preparing meals this summer. I swear 5 o’clock just pops up out of nowhere and suddenly I find myself in the kitchen scrounging around like a mad woman trying to find something that I can throw together in 20 minutes and call a meal. As a result, there’s been a whole lot of quinoa salad and other one bowl dinners happening around here this summer…

Yogurt and Granola Popsicles

7 / 18 / 168 / 30 / 16

It goes without saying that we have a thing for popsicles… Among many others, we’ve made milk & cereal popsicles, chunky fruit popsicles, polka dotted blueberry lemonade popsicles, watermelon popsicles, and most recently – yogurt and granola popsicles! These are basically just a yogurt and fruit parfait in popsicle form, so a totally acceptable breakfast option in my opinion {because com’on – it is summer after all!}

Strawberry Banana Oat Smoothie

5 / 27 / 158 / 30 / 15

With just over two weeks left in the desert, we’ve been doing our very best to work with what we have in the kitchen instead of doing our usual {ridiculously expensive} weekly grocery shop. So far so good, though the shelves are definitely looking quite bare. Luckily, we always seem to have something that can be thrown into the blender to create a yummy breakfast smoothie, or in today’s case according to Miss G, a ‘milkshake’. ☺

5 Fun Toastimals {made with bananas, berries, bread, and spread}

9 / 8 / 149 / 13 / 14

So though I haven’t mentioned it yet, Miss G and I have been pretty much stuck in the house for the last week and a bit… We’re not sure what’s going on, but she’s dealing with some sort of bladder issue that is causing her to have to go every few minutes, the poor thing. Needless to say, our usual routine of being out of the house every morning on fun adventures and meet-ups with friends is not happening right now. It’s just too hard.

In the meantime, we’re getting things done around the house {like painting a chalkboard wall finally and adding new pictures to our photo wall} and trying out some fun new activities. This morning, we decided that we’d have some fun with our breakfast! Instead of toast and fruit {a regular morning meal in our house}, we used our ingredients to create adorable little toast animals {or TOASTIMALS thanks to our friend Tairalyn} and admittedly, we had waaaay too much fun doing it.

The best part is that all of our toastimals can be made with these four ingredients – bread, your favourite spread, bananas, and berries (strawberries and blueberries to be specific). For ours, we used delicious walnut bread from Paul and almond butter, though cream cheese did make an appearance part way through. {Honey or any other nut butter would be good too!}

Before starting, we sketched out some of our ideas… First, I was the drawer, and then Gracen added to our idea sheet afterwards. Her illustrations include monkey toast {my drawing wasn’t doing it for her I guess}, FRUIT FLY toast {bahahahaha!}, and lizard toast {plus a cloud and some rain of course}.

Then it was time to get to work. Here are the 5 fun toastimals we came up with…

A bear {a favourite though not a new idea – we’ve been making this one since Miss G was wee}…

A kitty…

An owl…

A monkey…

And a chicken!

This poor guy did not get Miss G’s stamp of approval, sadly. He was supposed to be a pig, but kind of turned out looking like a dog or a bull or something else, and she declared him ‘very mix-upded’. Perhaps we’ll have to rework him and try again next time…

For now, however, I have to say that our little zoo of approved toast animals is pretty cute. ☺

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The Best Banana Pecan Oatmeal

8 / 23 / 1410 / 8 / 14

It’s certainly not one of the prettiest breakfasts, but this banana pecan oatmeal is a definite favourite in our house. And for good reason! By recommendation of a friend, I started making this when Miss G was a newborn and I was a constantly starving nursing mama. It was quick and easy to throw together, it satisfied my raging hunger come morning, and was delicious too – sort of like dessert for breakfast. I’m pretty sure I ate it most mornings for months, and it’s no surprise that Miss G now loves it too.

Broiled Grapefruit With Honey and Cinnamon

5 / 4 / 145 / 4 / 14

I had completely forgotten about this delicious broiled grapefruit until it donned on me last night as Grae and I were sharing a grapefruit for dessert. I’m not sure where I originally got the idea from, but when she was a tiny little thing, I’d simply broil hers with a little cinnamon on top, while mine would include a little bit of honey too. Now that she’s older and I don’t mind her having a little bit of honey here and there, this morning she got to try the real deal.

Whole Wheat Buttermilk Pancakes

4 / 25 / 144 / 25 / 14

You know what I miss? Spending time cooking and baking with Miss G. Don’t get me wrong… We do still spend some time in the kitchen together, but definitely not as much as we used to. Back home in Canada we probably did a cooking or baking project once a day. So what’s changed? Well firstly, here in Kuwait, I tutor several afternoons/evenings a week which means dinner prep is often done while Miss G rests after lunch, but mostly, our kitchen here just isn’t very inviting. And when your kitchen is a dark converted bedroom way on the far end of the apartment, spending a lot of time in it just isn’t that high on the priority list. That being said, I’d really like to get back into it. Time to suck it up. Grae loves cooking, I love cooking, and with the weather getting hotter (it’s currently 38 degrees), spending a little more time indoors is starting to become a necessity.

iPhoneography // Heart Pancakes

2 / 6 / 143 / 14 / 14

With nowhere to be this morning, Miss G and I declared it a pancake day. Her request? Making them heart-shaped. {Why not, right?} We whipped up a batch of our usual wholewheat flax and oat pancake batter and attempted to make it pink with the addition of beet juice. It didn’t work the way I was hoping it would {or at all really}, but oh well! We put our batter into the same squeeze bottle we use when we make spiderweb pancakes, and then simply created heart-shaped outlines and filled them in.

{3 Ingredient} Flourless Pancakes

11 / 18 / 1311 / 21 / 13

Very rarely does Brad ever make meal / recipe suggestions, but this summer he came home from volleyball all jazzed up about trying a new pancake recipe after hearing about it from one of his teammates. They did sound really interesting – they were flour-free, made of whole foods, and totally Miss G friendly, but for some reason or another {most likely the fact that we were packing up our house and moving overseas with a 2 year old in tow at the time}, we didn’t get around to making them.

A Favourite: Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie

9 / 9 / 139 / 9 / 13

Grae and I have been making versions of this delicious smoothie since she was a wee little thing, and it remains a favourite. It’s nutritious, filling, and tastes more like a thick and creamy milkshake than a good-for-you smoothie. {Milkshakes for breakfast? Yes please.}

Apple Sandwiches {An Old Favourite}

6 / 10 / 136 / 12 / 13

I’ve been making these fun and easy apple sandwiches for Miss G for a long time now (we didn’t follow the usual no nuts until the age of 2 rule) and they’ve always been a total hit. And because we load ours up with all kinds of healthful fillings, they make a perfect breakfast or even lunch!

You certainly don’t need all of these things, but since we almost always have them all on hand and Miss G enjoys the variety, we usually go for it. In today’s lineup was peanut butter, almond butter, and a pink lady apple, plus unsweetened coconut, pumpkin seeds, sliced almonds, old-fashioned oats, sunflower seeds, and hemp hearts. Also needed is a sharp knife and small cookie cutter of some sort (though you can do without if needed).

Apple sandwiches are really so simple to throw together that I’m sure instructions aren’t needed, but this is how we normally make ours… First off, I slice them up quite thinly. We usually get 8 or 9 slices (not including the 2 end pieces) per apple. Then we separate them into two piles – one where the seeds have to be cut out, and the other where there really aren’t any seeds at all.

Next, we use our small heart-shaped cookie cutter to cut the centres out of the seedy slices. You can use an apple corer or a sharp knife to the trick too. These pieces will become the sandwich tops.

On to the bottoms! Since these really don’t have any seeds, there’s no cookie cutter needed. Just slather them with your favourite nut butter…

And have your munchkin sprinkle them with the toppings of his or her choice.

Then pop the tops on and you’ve got a yummy snack or meal ready for your little one (or you!) to gobble up!

♥

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Flower Garden Yogurt Parfait

5 / 30 / 135 / 31 / 13

The other day, while quickly picking up a couple of craft supplies at the dollar store, Miss G and I stumbled upon these adorable miniature clay pots. We both laid eyes on them at the same time, and just as I was thinking, ‘Oooh! I must have those pots!’, she asked, ‘Mama, can we please take home those baby pots?’ Ummm, yes – we certainly can, baby girl.

At the time of purchase, I really had no idea what we’d use them for – all I knew was that there were tons of possibilities. This morning when I poked my head into the refrigerator to give Gracen some breakfast options, however, I knew exactly what they’d be good for…. Creating tiny edible flower gardens, of course!

To get started, Grae helped me gather up some things – plain organic greek yogurt, homemade granola (muesli would work too), some pineapple and melon slices (about a 1/2 inch thick), some cinnamon, our clay pot, some tiny wooden dowels (short skewers or food picks would work too), and daisy-shaped cookie cutters – then she was off to play dress-up.

While she was busy playing, scrubbed the pot well with hot soapy water. Then I mixed up approximately one part yogurt with one part granola, and scooped it into the pot. Next up, I covered the yogurt mixture with a little bit more granola and generously sprinkled cinnamon on top.

Using a daisy-shaped cookie cutter Miss G got in her Easter basket, I cut little flower shapes out of pineapple, cantaloupe, and watermelon.

Then I carefully speared them onto our tiny wooden dowels. I did contemplate colouring the dowels green beforehand, but I didn’t have any natural green food colouring on hand and didn’t feel comfortable using the real stuff since it would be directly in the food. Oh well! Maybe next time…

To put it all together, I simply placed the ‘flower lollipops’ (as G calls them) into the yogurt mixture. Because of the thickness of Greek yogurt, and the fact that it’s 1/2 granola, the flowers stayed up really well.

Gracen was tickled pink with her edible flower garden, and not only did she request additional flower lollipops during breakfast, but she also requested another flower garden yogurt parfait for afternoon snack. Yay for healthy and fun munchkin meals!

♥

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