‘Back to school’ means a change in a lot of routines for everyone in the house. New schedules are developed, new patterns emerge and new frustrations arise.
Our oldest is only starting preschool and she is out of the house for three hours a day and we are all feeling it. Because of drop off and pick up schedules, our youngest’s naps are off, and because of the increased activities that our girls get to enjoy, they have been more tired in the evenings.
When schedules go awry, some important things to keep in mind are healthy meals/snacks, lots of water, and a decent amount of undisturbed sleep.
Breakfast
School mornings are busy and everyone is running around trying to get what they need and get out the door. Often an apple is grabbed and eaten hastily on the way to work, if at all. We often make pancakes on the weekend (there is a great recipe on the Bisquick packages for pancakes, I just add a little vanilla and cinnamon), and if I know our week ahead looks a little busy, I make extra and freeze them. They freeze really well and heat up in the microwave in less than a minute — faster than making a cup of coffee. Just let them cool a bit before putting them in a freezer bag and make sure they are separated from each other so they don’t freeze together and get stuck.
Snacks
We always have an abundance of fruit and vegetables on hand for snack attacks. Another great option is yogurt. After our girls began getting tired of yogurt all of the time, I started putting little drops of yogurt on wax paper and freezing them. The girls went nuts for them. They thought they were amazing and asked for them to be made again. Here, I used an icing decorator and made drops like if I was putting icing on a cake, but you can easily put the yogurt in to a baggie and cut a small hole, then squeeze out the yogurt (which is what I’ve done since). Here’s my tweet last month about this. I used Yoplait Strawberry Yogurt for this one.
Want an epic treat for your tots? Put yogurt in small drops on wax paper and put in freezer. Better than candy! twitter.com/ThisBirdsDay/s…
— Sheri Landry (@ThisBirdsDay) August 25, 2012
Dinner
This has been said many times before and it deserves another go at it. My go to recipes for this new school year and fall/winter in general are always slow cooker recipes. You can find a lot of recipes on the Life Made Delicious website, and creating your own is so easy.
I always start with a container of soup, add a bit of milk or water, then your choice of meat and if you want to make it in to a casserole then add either rice or quinoa and a frozen vegetable (Green Giant works well), and you can season how ever you want. So for example, a tin of cream of broccoli soup with some milk, then some chicken breasts with rice and frozen peas. I would season it with a little bit of paprika and dill and it would sit in the slow cooker while life went on during the day.
Slow cooker meals are the easiest to prepare, and cause the least amount of clean up which is awesome for me because like Gene Simmons (KISS) says ‘time is money’, and like I say ‘I hate cleaning’.
Disclosure: I am part of the Life Made Delicious Blogger program and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog are my own.
Thanks for sharing the tip for making frozen yogurt drops. My dd will eat yogurt now
Amy Dell (@mimishumblepie) recently posted..National Guacamole Day! Help Send 100 Kids to Camp via @eatwholly
Thank you for the great dinner idea, every day this week I have been scratching my head and wondering “what do I have for dinner?”. Your story sent me straight to my freezer where I grabbed some beef cubes, add a Campbell’s soup tin, veggies and rice and tada! Dinner! You’ve saved my day :)