Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day.  Is it the most important?  I don’t know, but it’s the coziest and it has the coffee.  Hot, un-rushed family breakfasts are by far my favorite perk of a homeschooling day.  I hope our family will always have warm memories of hearty pots of oatmeal and eggs frying in cast iron!

I always make a weekly dinner menu, but for breakfasts I like to just stock a handful of staples that make a variety of meals. This means I’m ready for breakfast time without having to think about every single meal on my menu plan.  It shortens menu planning and gives me flexibility for whatever a day brings.  (Like snow?  Waffles, for sure.)

I stock our shelves for simple, grain-based meals like oatmeal, pancakes, waffles and banana bread.  Eggs and toast is the mainstay that I make three to four mornings a week.

This takes a little planning, but once you’ve done it once, it’s really simple.  The first step is to observe what your family likes to eat most at breakfast time!

IMG 5790

Here are the main breakfast staples I use:

  1. Oats
  2. Wheat berries (hard red for yeast breads, soft white for everything else)
  3. Eggs
  4. Butter
  5. Raw Milk (I can culture my own buttermilk from this!)
  6. Maple syrup

2022 01 09 0001

I combine them in different ways to create our favorite breakfasts:

  1. Baked Oatmeal (this is such a fun and easy change-up to oatmeal; it feels like taking cake out of the oven for breakfast!)
  2. Oatmeal
  3. Pancakes (from the Bread Becker’s recipe book)
  4. French Toast (made with bread from the Bread Becker’s recipe book) My girls can make this by themselves now, which is really nice.
  5. Waffles (from the Bread Becker’s recipe book)
  6. Eggs and Toast
  7. Banana Bread (during the summer I do Zucchini Bread!)
  8. Granola and whole, raw milk
  9. Dutch Baby (this is like making a giant crepe in the oven; same texture and ingredients, but without standing over the stove!)
  10. Eggs in a basket (we add a sprinkle of cheese to ours!)
  11. Whole Wheat Cinnamon Raisin Bread (from where else but Bread Becker’s recipe book!)
  12. Buttermilk Biscuits with Eggs (Bread Becker’s recipe book…again!)
IMG 6006

say this is about warm family memories but it may also be because I’m unmotivated and very dismal about eating cold things at breakfast. Yogurt and smoothies belong in this world after 11 am.

IMG 5799

I linked up to all of my very favorite recipes for you!  You can find them along with other ideas here on my Pinterest Breakfast board.

Also? My little secret to packing in nutrition is that I mill my own flour. If you already bake at home, grinding your flour is just about like grinding your coffee.  (I use a Wondermill.)
 
I’m not partnering with a brand or anything like that because I’m not that cool.  I’m pretty much the opposite of cool, which is an enthusiastic grain mill user!  (There’s a lot of us out there and we find each other on the Internet and at Azure Standard pick-ups.)
Also this post may contain (does contain) Amazon affiliate links.  I have to say that part.
2022 01 09 0002
Anyways.  Freshly milled grains contain 40 of the 44 essential nutrients needed to sustain life!  So if your kids are not great at eating lots of veggies, you can help by milling your wheat.
IMG 5757

I do eat slightly different from the kids, so I do veggie omelettes, eggs and toast or avocado toast most of the time (unless I just need a waffle with melted butter, you know?)

I hope you enjoyed perusing this list and maybe found a new recipe or two to take home to your own breakfast table!  What kinds of breakfast staples do you stock?