On-The-Go Toddler Breakfast

As a Registered Dietitian who also happens to be the mom of a toddler, I feel that it's my responsibility to try & make sure that Cameron gets a well-balanced diet. But unfortunately, that doesn't always happen. It may be a particularly rushed morning or a really hectic night or Cam might be cranky & not wanting anything to do with food.

So, during my lunch break at work today, I started to think of some on-the-go breakfast ideas since we let Cam sleep until the last minute before it's time to fly out the door. We don't want to wake him up earlier than he needs to be up, so I tried to come up with something that he could eat in the car on the way to daycare.



I wanted something that wasn't messy & that was well-balanced with a good amount of total calories, protein & fiber. Cam drinks about 8oz of whole milk right when he wakes up, so he's getting plenty of calcium & fat from that. Children ages 1-3 need 500mg of calcium daily & one cup of milk contains about 290mg, so it's not all that difficult for a little one to meet their calcium needs. Click here to see the calcium content of other foods if your child isn't a big fan of milk. It's pretty amazing to know that Cameron needs 1200-1300 calories/day; that's close to what I need each day & I weigh about 90# more than him!

Mike picked up a whole wheat pancake mix with about 3g of fiber per serving, but I wanted to up that amount so I added All Bran buds to the food processor & threw in some almonds for some healthy fat.





I mashed some bananas with honey so the pancakes would have sweetness baked right in to avoid the mess of syrup.



I found that on our electric stove, the heat only needed to be at low-medium to cook them through without getting too brown since they were really dense. I made the first couple of batches a little too big; because they are so dense, a little goes a long way.



And viola, fifteen minutes later I had about fifteen pancakes that I threw into a Ziplock bag & put in the freezer so we can nuke them as needed when it's time to bolt out the door with our little guy in tow!