Most of the time, I like to make things from scratch but there are times when convenience triumphs! Those mornings when my baby decides to wake up an hour before his usual time, and I walk into the kitchen barely knowing what I am doing, it's helpful to be able to make something quick. Otherwise, I am fairly sure that I will mix the salt with the sugar, milk for orange juice, you get the idea.
A couple of days ago, I made pancake batter. I say I made, but it is from a box with just a few tweaks. After a couple of days in the fridge (the batter has no eggs), the batter starts to get flat so I decided to make a sort of sandwich out of them! Think pancake and crepe meeting half way. My baby seemed to REALLY enjoy it! I hope yours does too!
What I did:
I used a gluten-free pancake mix.
Added organic sweet potato puree instead of oil.
Added a handful of raisins.
Added about a tsp. of ground cinnamon.
You'll also need:
Peanut butter spread
Coarsely mashed ripe banana
I made a bigger size pancake so that they could be a little thinner and so that I could cut into it with a cookie cutter. Once the pancake was done. I used a cookie cutter to cut two of the same shapes (in my case, a guitar) and spread peanut butter onto the pieces, then topped with the mashed banana and voila! You got a breakfast sandwich!
A few days ago, I went to one of my favorite coffee houses in Okinawa. To be honest, it has become a favorite since I've had a baby. It is open very early, has great high chairs, and an awesome cabinet filled with toys, all which are rarities in this tiny paradise.
I decided to order the house smoothie for my little one since it was made with "guanabana," a fruit that I grew up eating but that I've never seen in Okinawa or any where else for that matter. I mixed it with water so that he could suck through the straw and he loved it. I decided to try some at home and why not add some veggies!
After all, there is a craze going on right now with green, detox, smoothies. My purpose for it, of course, is not detox but I like to add a source of iron whenever I can. There are a million possibilities and I'm sure, I'll post a few of those in the weeks to come.
Here's what I did:
1/2 cup of fresh organic spinach
1 ripe banana
4 oz of organic vanilla baby yogurt (you could just use plain vanilla yogurt)
1/2 cup of frozen organic strawberries
1/3 cup of frozen organic blueberries
3 oz of 100% pineapple juice (you could also use water)
*I made it rather thin so that he could drink it out of his straw sippy but you could add more or less juice to reach desire consistency.
Blend it all together and there you are!
