Photo by Muffet http://www.flickr.com/photos/calliope/

Over the years, the biggest battle I’ve waged with my children has been over eating breakfast. My daughter Madelin (age 19 and about to start her third year of college) has never liked cereals – hot or cold – so that was never an option for her. With her having to leave the house by 7:30am (and these days 6:00am) there was never time to cook pancakes, french toast, bacon, eggs or other hot breakfast foods. When she was younger she’d try to skip eating breakfast entirely which was always an argument.

My son Bo (age 14 and about to start grade 10) – was always hard to get up in the morning and often would barely have his eyes open when the school bus would arrive – no matter how early I tried to get him going he’d leave it to the last second. It wasn’t that he didn’t want breakfast, it was that there wasn’t any time (just ask the bus driver who’d be honking at the end of my drive at 7:20am every morning).

Mornings were a war-zone and everyone walked out the door hungry, stressed or angry. Sometimes all three.

They say the the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. It took me  a while but I finally changed my strategy.

Why was I so hung up on “breakfast” food?

Who said that breakfast had to be bacon and eggs or cereal? Why can’t breakfast be leftover tuna casserole from last night? Or a ham and tomato sandwich? A bowl of chili? As long as they eat something (and something relatively healthy) what does it matter what it is? I talked it over with the kids (they were maybe 5 and 10 at the time) and we agreed.

On days when the kids have a bit more time they will have anything they can find in the fridge – leftover pizza, chili, half a hamburger, beef stew, etc.  A minute or less in the microwave and it’s ready to eat. Some days they’ll make a frozen entree (when did we stop calling them “tv dinners”?) – a minute or two and zap!

On days when they have to dash out the door a sandwich or a Hot Pocket (Maddy’s fav is the Hot Pockets Ultimate Ham and Cheese) that they can eat on their way to school is the way to go. Mornings are no longer a battle zone (well at least not over breakfast – laundry is another story) – the kids are happy, have quick breakfasts they enjoy. So what if it isn’t what most consider “breakfast” – their tummies are full.

Tell Us What Non-Tradtional Breakfasts Your Family Eats for a Chance to Win $500 for Back-to-School from Nestlé & Walmart!

Nestlé is offering a $500 Walmart gift card to one lucky reader of Fridge Foragers to help out with your Back-to-School shopping.  You’ll have an opportunity to enter every day for 5 days  so check back here daily to enter to win! The winner will be selected randomly on Monday, August 24th at 11:59pm (eastern time) and will have 24 hours to respond.

CONTEST is open to residents of Canada and the USA only.

How to enter:

1. Subscribe to the Fridge Foragers email newsletter. You may have seen the sign up form when you visited today -  if not you can also sign up by entering your name and email address in the Subscribe box at the top of the right side column on this page.

AND

2. Leave a comment. Tell us what non-traditional breakfasts your family eats, or would like to eat.

Note: You must subscribe to the newsletter and leave a comment to qualify to win.

Additional/Optional ways to enter, leaving each one in a separate comment:

• Twitter the giveaway, including a link back here and my handle, @Merlene -1 entry
• Share on facebook or similar social networking site and leave a comment telling me. -1 entry
• Create a Whrrl story using photos of your recipe and I’ll give you an additional (include link to story)-25 entries!

FINE PRINT

This giveaway is sponsored by Nestle.  Giveaway closes on August 24th at about 11pm EST.