I like to post on FB about my girls. The Swirlies. A lot. They are hilarious….like two little old ladies. And to clarify, their nickname “The Swirlies” came from how I used to call them when they were really small. I’d say “Let’s go girly-swirly-whirlies!” when we were trying to leave the house or if I was trying to get them moving. Then it became abbreviated to “Girly Swirlies”….then just “The Swirlies.”

They, like all kids, have completely different personalities and tastes. Shelby tends to be a picky eater and Sara tends to “graze” where she will snack on fruit, yogurt, cereal, cheese sticks, etc., all day long. My focus since the beginning of this year is to get as much “fake foods”, processed foods, foods with long lists of ingredients that I can’t pronounce, out of our eating. “Clean eating” is what it’s often referred to, but I just think of it as getting as much real, whole foods, onto our plates as much as possible. Doing this gradually, so no one will freak out or rebel in house…I know when I am pushing it too far because I can just smell mutiny in the air when I do (and their dad is usually the rebel leader).

This can be very challenging for most families because the food industry is so clever at packaging foods to make them appear more healthy than they really are. “Health halos” is how Brian Wansink, PhD (“Mindless Eating”, 2006) referred to the deceptively “healthy” packaging of most processed foods (a book that I highly recommend). I fell victim to the health halos in spite of how I always prided myself on being able to distinguish between what is healthy and what isn’t. I found myself eating much more processed food than I perceived. And feeding that to my children. Seeing my 9-year old’s weight go up this winter was the motivation I needed to do something different. Cooking most of my meals at home out of real foods, whole foods, is my focus and I can already tell it’s making a difference in all of us. I’ll blog more on this later, but I just wanted to give a little background on what started us on this whole foods thing.

I cook my girls breakfast at home every day. I am fortunate that my work schedule allows this, I am able to feed them at home each morning and take them to school. I have a go-to list of breakfast ideas that I have to switch up occasionally, depending on the whim of the Swirlies.

Their favorite breakfast right now is homemade waffles. Santa brought me a waffle iron two Christmases ago and it’s been awesome. It doesn’t take long, I use Bob’s Red Mill 10 Grain Pancake & Waffle whole grain mix and follow the directions for waffles. It mixes up fast and tastes really good. It has whole flax seeds in it, and you don’t get the Omega-3 benefits of flax unless the seeds are ground up. So I always throw a couple tablespoons of ground flax seed into the mix (I keep a package of ground flax seeds in my freezer so it won’t go rancid so quickly), and I use olive oil or melted coconut oil for the mix. If you are pressed for time in the morning, you could make several waffles in advance and then freeze them. My waffle iron is for a thicker, Belgium-style waffle, so I’ve been afraid to freeze them because I don’t know how they will reheat in the microwave. Maybe I should invest in a toaster oven (like I NEED another appliance up in hurr).

I stopped buying what I thought were healthy, whole grain, frozen waffles because of how many ingredients they had, and how much unhealthy fat they contained (trying to get away from soybean oil, and any type of fat derived from corn). Not to mention the ever-present high fructose corn syrup, or one of the many other names for processed sugar.

Pancakes are always another Swirly favorite. I use the same Bob’s Red Mill mix but follow the directions for pancakes. And I change up the flavor by adding mashed bananas, or blueberries, or strawberries, or their current favorite – semi-sweet chocolate chips. Sometimes I’ll make a large pancake for each of them and they’ll decorate them with fruit, similar to the “Create-a-Face” pancake that they serve at IHOP.

I switched to organic maple syrup as well last year. One of my issues is that my 9-year old finds it too sweet, as do I. So I admit I keep a bottle of low-carb pancake syrup on-hand. Lol. I have to figure out something that works besides that because it is loaded with ingredients I don’t recognize. It’s all a work in-progress….

I don’t buy yogurt in a tube anymore. One of my goals with the change in foods is to take alot of the food dyes and processed sugar out as well. Shelby had an allergic reaction to one brand of kid yogurt and I think it was the food dye they used in it that set her off. Any kind of kid yogurt in a tube has a lot of sugar, so I just quit buying it for a long time until they forgot about it. I recently started buying plain, low-fat, organic yogurt and flavor it with maple syrup or sometimes add a little vanilla extract. I have some strawberry puree in the refrigerator that I want to use to try to make strawberry yogurt, but I don’t have any takers, or any enthusiasm, for that idea just yet. Sara is a fan of plain, sweetened-at-home yogurt with homemade granola mixed in.

Eggs are a breakfast staple. They like them scrambled or hard-boiled, with a slice of toast on the side. I started buying whole wheat bread from a local bakery and it was a tough sell for the Swirlies. Although I like it because it is locally produced and only has 5 ingredients (no high fructose corn syrup or sugar, it has honey in it), they didn’t like the coarse, heavier texture. So that same bakery (Great Harvest Bread Co., here in Lawrence, KS) also offers a bread they call Half & Half bread. All the same ingredients but instead of 100% whole wheat flour, they use half whole wheat flour and half white flour. It’s softer and it has a slightly sweeter taste. The Swirlies love it. I’m willing to give a little on the bread so that they will eat something as close to whole foods as I can get it. I always give them some fruit with their breakfast and they always drink a cup of 1% organic milk, Shelby sometimes prefers water.

Sometimes they like smoothies for their breakfast. Shelby is a fan of a smoothie I got from Erin Brown’s Fit Mama Training website (http://www.fitmamatraining.com) called the Green Monster Smoothie, while Sara just likes a banana blended with a cup of milk. I like to give them a smoothie with a homemade, whole grain muffin or donut. The fruit is in their smoothie so I don’t need to serve any additional unless they ask.

They also like to eat toast with different toppings. Shelby has a peanut allergy and I haven’t convinced her of the virtues of almond butter. She was addicted to Nutella, but with the food changes, that was the first thing to go. I made a homemade version of Nutella using fresh ground cashew butter that I got at the Community Mercantile here in town, and blew out my Magic Bullet AND my blender trying to mix it with cocoa powder, coconut oil, and some maple syrup. I like it. It’s sweet and chocolatey without all the sugar and palm oil in Nutella. Shelby tolerates it. I think I need to tweak my recipe next time. Shelby will eat a slice of toast with homemade nutella and sliced bananas on top, Sara will eat a slice of toast with natural peanut butter and sliced bananas on top. I noticed that since I switched breads (I used to buy a low-carb 45 calorie name brand bread), and changed the nutella from store-bought to homemade, that they get full faster. Shelby went from eating 2 slices of low carb bread to just getting full on one.

Cream of Wheat and oatmeal from rolled oats (old fashioned oatmeal) are always good as a back-up plan. They just like them plain, there was a tepid response when I cooked them with diced apples and cinnamon. They will ask for a diced banana in their hot cereal sometimes. I used to throw some vanilla protein powder in their cereal, but I stopped doing that and just find another source of protein to go with it, like a boiled egg or a piece of string cheese. They are pretty good at telling me what they want in the morning.

For my wild rice loving peeps: I am a huge fan of a rice pudding type breakfast. I figured out how to make a hot cereal dish with wild rice when I have the good stuff from Minnesota. I take leftover cooked wild rice, mix it with some almond milk, add dried cranberries, some cinnamon, a little maple syrup, a dash of vanilla extract, sometimes I’ll throw some sliced almonds or pecans in, and heat in the microwave for about 30 seconds to warm it all up. It is soooooo good. It’s almost dessert-like. And you can’t get any closer to clean, organic, whole grain than the real wild rice from northern Minnesota.

And I have to give some…so this week I bought them a box of Cascadian Farm Organic Cinnamon Crunch cereal. They really liked that this morning.

Here are some of the websites where I get recipes for homemade donuts, muffins, granola, etc. They have awesome recipes that I’ve tried for breakfast, lunch and dinner and I’m still working my way through their lists.

Real Fit Real Food Mom:  http://www.realfitrealfoodmom.com

*My girls love the recipe for Snickerdoodle pancakes on this site, and the recipe for applesauce donuts.

100 Days of Real Food:  http://www.100daysofrealfood.com

Super Healthy Kids: http://www.superhealthykids.com

So those are some ideas to get started. Look for more posts like this in the future because I always have people asking me for meal ideas. And I’m very thankful for all the moms who blog who have inspired me and helped me learn how to feed my family better.