Practice Week

School--and thus the "writing season"--does not start until the end of the month, but this next week will be the practice session for schedules and alarms to come.

The girl child has "get ready for middle school" classes Monday through Friday which begin in the early morning hours. Also on Monday, both kids have registration before that class begins, so we will be getting up almost as early as our 7:30 start times require during the school year. And next weekend, I'm volunteering to help with the early morning set up at the upcoming wine and music festival. (Yeah, tough job, but someone has to do it! HA)

We'll see how it goes attempting to send our flabby, lazy summer daily round off to fit and timely boot camp. Ah Fall, thank goodness for college football!

And at the risk of going all Heloise on your arses, I have a handy-dandy easy, cheap, and mostly healthy breakfast food idea that has worked for me twice now. That's a ringer in my test kitchen.
Here goes:
I start with a box of cake mix or brownie mix, any flavor or variety. Get the store brand as they are usually under a buck. But forget about the eggs and oil and butter. Just dump the mix into a big bowl, add whatever dried fruits, nuts, and other healthy goodies of your choosing. I use dried cranberries flavored or plain, whatever nuts I have on hand, chocolate chips, coconut, ground flax seed, and wheat germ. Then throw in a few spices like ginger, cinnamon, or nutmeg. Add uncooked oatmeal--I use the instant with the cream powder in it for flavor--and just a few tablespoons of sugar--I use the Stevia-based product, Truvia. Those are all your dry goods. For moisture, I use a healthy dollop of Greek yougurt, jam or preserves, and milk. Around here we go with either soy, almond, or coconut milk. Add the wet ingredients until you have a very thick batter consistency, spoon into 24 cupcake tins with liners, and bake as usual. (For me that means 350 degrees for 20 minutes, but I'm at an unusually high altitude, so adjust as you see fit.) This is a great way to get a lot of healthy and breakfast-appropriate items into a small serving, and they'll last you for several mornings. So far so good, as I've done this with a chocolate brownie mix and a strawberry cake mix to much success and approval. And since there are no eggs, no more saying "no" when the small people ask to lick the spoon!

As the old song goes: "School days, school days,
                                     Good old Golden Rule days."

Wish me luck and let them eat cake!!