Maybe I'm the only one, but around here we make large pots of some sort of hot cereal for breakfast. Usually it's either Malto-Meal or oatmeal, but I fill my big dutch oven pretty fill with whatever I'm making that day. Since it's usually fairly plain tasting, I've found some ways to help my kids learn to love these hot cereals, with just a few additions.
Like today, to my massive pot of Malto-Meal (about 10 servings worth), I added somewhere around 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice, about 1 cup of brown sugar, and roughly a cup of milk. Other days I've done plain cinnamon and brown sugar, and sometimes I add nuts and/or raisins as well, depending on what I have on hand and what the kids are in the mood for. The nice thing about cinnamon, is that it has a lot of good properties, one of which being that it helps control blood sugar to a degree, so that the kids don't go on a sugar high from all the carbs. I love that about cinnamon, among other things. And my kids love the extra flavor.
Other flavors I've done are apple pie spice, as well as just a mix of cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg (sort of like ginger snaps). They really liked that one. I have also added vanilla extract in the past (homemade of course), and honey in varying amounts.
While they weren't too thrilled about the plain hot cereals at first, after a few trial and errors, they seem to love it now, especially as the weather starts growing colder. Even the baby loves it now, with all the yummy flavors.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
How Do You Dress Up Your Hot Cereals?
Posted by Shana at 9:32 AM
Labels: Cooking 101, Homemaking 101
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4 comments:
We do about the same thing - hot cereal made with milk, a tiny knob of butter and brown sugar. We make cream of wheat, stone cut oats and millet that way. When I was a kid I loved putting some fruit preserves on hot cereal, especially in winter. My favorite was apricot and strawberry. Yum!
Preserves sound good, I may have to give that a try with the kids. Some of them might go for that :)
We don't currently do much in the way of hot cereals (too hot during the days right now!!), but when we do, we use a number of things for toppings!
-apples stewed with some cinnamon and brown sugar
- blueberries, almost like a syrup
- fruit salad
- brown sugar on its own
- for those brave like me, blackstrap molasses!
- jams/preserves as were mentioned previously
- ice cream and sometimes sundae toppings(yeah, I know, weird, but DH likes it!)
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