Ice Cream for Breakfast?!

I just gave my kids ice cream for breakfast!

What kind of nutritionist are you, you ask?

Check it out:

As usually, be forewarned, all quantities are guesstimates, but are actually surprisingly accurate.

• one bag frozen organic strawberries
• one bag frozen organic berry mix (cherries, blueberries, raspberries)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 Tablespoons maple syrup
  (You can always increase this if it doesnʼt come out sweet enough, but donʼt underestimate the suggestive power of a frozen fruity treat, especially with the vanilla aroma. Try it with just a little sweetener first, less is better for the immune system and so on.)
• 2 cups organic plain yogurt.
  (I use dairy yogurt but you can use any kind of yogurt. If you donʼt want to use yogurt, you can soak a cup of raw cashews overnight and put them in instead, adding water as needed to get the texture you want.)

Place all ingredients into your food pulverizing appliance of choice. Let it rip and then, when you think itʼs done, give it a few more minutes. You want it very creamy.

“Do all your kids eat this,” you ask?
Yes, and no. Feeding four children is proving to require some creativity when it comes to providing options.

I have one kid who only will eat one food at a time, but with very low predictability. For example, if I make rice and red lentils with greens, he may eat the lentils, may eat the rice or may eat the greens – but never all three. I have two kids who will eat all of it and one kid who will most likely not eat any of it and will cry that she is hungry but will refuse all options posed to her until I put her to bed with crackers.

No Iʼm not proud. Go figure.

So the breakfast “ice cream” option is great one because I can make one round, and then just rinse and repeat to make the custom orders. Two kids eat the above recipe, one kid will only eat it if it has mango only “and no other fruit,” and one kid will only eat it with strawberries, mango and/or cherries – but no blueberries. No worries, it stores well in the fridge, and never goes to waste.

Food pulverizing appliance choice considerations

When my kitchen is a total mess and I have no usable counter space, I just shove as much frozen fruit and yogurt into a quart size wide mouth mason jar as I can and use an immersion blender. Then I can just rinse off the wand and use the mason jar for serving and storing leftovers in the fridge. Itʼs easy clean up and can be done amidst even the highest levels of chaos.

This method, however, requires that you stay focused, keep all childrenʼs hands away, unplug the appliance every single time you put it down (even for a second) and excludes small children from helping with the funnest (I know this is not a word but itʼs the funnest way to say most fun) part of the whole thing. This is an important point because the more fun the food prep, the higher the chance of actual ingestion of any food.

I recently finally discovered that if I use a food processor, I can make more at a time, and the kids can push the button. This is a plus, but requires a bit of counter space, and clean up involves a few more parts.

A blender would work too, but I find that it requires more fiddling and a little more liquid to get all the chunks processed. You donʼt want to add too much liquid because then it doesnʼt look like ice cream and you loose your key selling point.

So there you have it folks, ice cream for breakfast. Enjoy.