Breaking out of the Cereal Rut- Day 1

Photo Credit: Michelle Mieklejohn/freedigitalphotos.net

On Friday I wrote about how I needed to break my family out of the cereal rut.  My plan was to start today, but I did a little experiementation over the weekend and I'm really glad that I did.  On Sunday, I decided to make an overnight pumpkin french toast bake with apples on top. I made it with high fiber bread and very little sugar. As it cooked, it smelled delicious, and I had very high hopes.  It didn't taste quite as good as I had hoped, but everyone ate every last piece on their plate, so it appeared to be a success.

Until... the last bite was swallowed and the first words out of their mouths were, "Can I have a bowl of cereal now?"  My husband looked at me, I sighed in defeat and let them have a bowl of cereal.  But, it still wasn't over. I then left to take my daughter to religious ed., came home an hour later and my son said, "I had a banana and scrambled egss," and my daughter said, "I'm starving, can I please eat something else before we go to church?

Ugh!  Oh well, I hadn't officially started yet, and it's all a learning PROCESS, I can't expect perfection right away (or ever, really.)

Last night, I had a talk, as planned, with the family to get them on board. When I mentioned, "No cereal," the initial reaction was not good. But, after telling them they could have it as an afterschool snack if they wanted, and getting them excited about the "new breakfasts," they were a bit more enthusiastic.

This morning, I served smoothies (made with frozen fruit, a banana, and milk), sweet apple chicken sausage, and half a piece of whole grain toast with butter.

Overall breakfast went well, except for the chicken sausage. I had wanted to find pre-cooked turkey sausage, but could find neither pre-cooked, nor turkey when it came to sausage.  The chicken apple sausage was the best I could find, even though I knew that when my kids tried it before they didn't like it.

My daughter said, "Um... I think I had this before and I didn't really like it... but I'll do my best to eat some."  "My older son ate one bite with no comment, but didn't finish the rest," and the youngest spit it out on his napkin.

When everyone got up from the table, I reminded them that this was it, and if they were still hungry, they needed to eat more.  All of them opted for more smoothie.  No one asked for cereal, or anything else for that matter, so I would consider Day 1 a success!

Breaking Out of the Cereal Rut- Day 2

Breaking Out of the Cereal Rut- Day 3