posted by Jessica Lynette on Family, food

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They boys eat oatmeal for breakfast every.single.morning – ‘cept Saturdays when we all indulge in some sweet goodness that Paul dreams up once a week. Lately he’s been making delicious scones and once he did cinnamon rolls… but that’s an entirely different subject.

Oatmeal. It has saved my morning sanity.

Upon returning from Nigeria, where food selection was, well, not much of a selection, I realized the beauty in simplicity when it comes to food options. Especially food options given to little boys.

If I know what they’re going to eat and they know what they are going to eat and it’s always the same then that equals simplicity and peacefulness.

By always the same I don’t literally mean every bowl every morning is identical. I couldn’t do that to myself. Or to them. I have had so much fun coming up with new flavors of oatmeal each morning. {Up until 3 weeks ago Paul and I were eating it each morning with them, but then we knocked carbs out of our week day diet and our daily bowl of oatmeal was replaced with eggs.}

I keep an oatmeal bar permanently set up on our counter in the cute yellow tray I picked up at a yard sale. Having {most} everything all together makes it a breeze to put a bowl together.

The selection of items in the tray varies – mostly depending on sale items at the grocery store.

We have sunflower seeds.

Vanilla and Cinnamon.

Raw Almonds. {which we also roast and make into almond butter. *amazing*}

Other items that appear randomly in our Oatmeal Bar tray include; salt, coconut oil, raisins, other nuts and honey.

Other items that end up mixed into the oatmeal: jam, frothed milk, fruit and spices.

The possibilities are truly endless and it is fun combining ingredients trying to make new favorites.

Recent favorite bowls of oatmeal:

Peanut butter, sliced banana and jam.
Canned peaches, vanilla and frothed milk with stevia. {My favorite!}
Molasses, nutmeg, raisins and cinnamon.
Nuts, sunflower seeds and {homemade} applebutter.

Most of the items in the tray are stored in canning jars and the little jars for the vanilla and cinnamon are cleaned out maple syrup jars from Cracker Barrel. I loooove them and am slowly but surely growing my collection of them. They would make the perfect jar for holding homemade vanilla. {which I am currently out of. We’ve got cheap’o Dollar Store stuff in ours right now.}

We have had this Oatmeal bar up and running since December and, two and a half months into this, I am even more enthusiastic about this idea then when I started it. It works so well for us and our mornings are definitely a lot smoother without having to spend time thinking about what will be served for breakfast.

Tags: children, meal, organizing, recipe