43 // Simple Post-Summer Vacation Meal Idea
Simple Post-Summer Vacation Meal Idea:
spin THIS meal wheel for an easy take on coffee cake with kids
Summer travels are always fun, but often we can come home with little routine and a whole lotta laundry. That's why in this Mealtimes Made Easy episode, I share with you a real-life take on our return home from Tennessee - featuring a little something we brought back with us and are going to be enjoying at breakfast this week. My kids haven't eaten, slept, or operated like "normal" for over a week, so I want to find seamless ways to shift back into our realities while also reinforcing the healthy habits we live by. Tune in for an adaptable, yet actionable idea as to how!
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Full Episode Transcription
Please note this a raw transcription. If something doesn’t read correctly, toggle to that timestamp in the show so that you can listen in on what was actually being said!
[00:00:00] Mom. Are you struggling with how to feed your kids? Right? Do you wish that there was a way to help your child try new foods? Do you look at a pantry cluttered with pirate, booty and a fridge full of the same foods every week and wonder how you're gonna get your family's meals off the hot mess express.
[00:00:16] I know what it feels like to scroll through all the feeding and counts on Instagram and to see a bunch of Fuji foods that my family would never eat. And I too have pinned all the healthy recipes with good intention. But zero execution. I understand as a busy mom of three, that it can feel really unattainable, especially on the days when I'm exhausted.
[00:00:34] I have a short fuse and I really just want an easy win to end the day with, well, that's where these meals made. Easy episode ideas come from with everyday ingredients that you already have on hand, I give you one meal or snack idea a week that's dietician mom approved and is gonna fit in your family's busy life.
[00:00:52] So get ready to press, add to cart and to make meals. Easy again. Hey y'all I am officially back from our family vacation to Tennessee. It was a really sweet trip, but as with all family vacations, getting back into a routine can be really tricky. This was the first time ever that we haven't worked our like vacation and travel plans around a nap time.
[00:01:16] But my kid's sleep schedule got off, you know, the way we eat and the food in Tennessee was much different. Let alone us just eating out a lot more than we usually do. And we are. Needing to get back into a routine. And so I was thinking it would be fun for today's episode to give you guys just a real life example of how I would apply what I like to refer to as the meal wheel.
[00:01:37] This is something that I walk families through in depth on my meal times made easy method, and I go through a whole module with it, broken into submodules for you to understand kind of each of these steps and how you would apply it to any given. Meal idea or specific meal, be at breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, et cetera.
[00:01:57] And so I wanted to just go ahead and kind of walk you through what that would look like here. Because when we came back from Tennessee, we came back with, you know, just some fun little foods and items that we had found along the trip. And one of 'em was like a cinnamon apple bread, like kind of coffee cake type bread.
[00:02:14] And this is something honestly, I would just love to have with a cup of coffee in the afternoon. But I was thinking about as we eat it up and get back into a routine this week, but also eat up something that, you know, we wouldn't always have it had me thinking about how one, if you listen to episode 31, where I talk about easy breakfast ideas for summer, it's why I love Mondays being a make ahead Monday.
[00:02:36] And how. Going sometimes just getting away from our norm makes me really inspired to think about new ideas and all the different, like new things I could make that I often just don't make. And so while this week we'll be eating up this cinnamon apple coffee cake bread. It also got me thinking about all the other little breakfast breads that I might be interested in making for my kids.
[00:02:57] And I offer a lot of options and ideas here on the combination card down. Or you can, you know, make them as muffins or you can make it as like a mini loaf for a big loaf for whatever it might be. But what I really wanna do today and how I really wanna start transitioning these Monday meal times made easy episodes are to walk you through a simple meal wheel idea each week so that you can work through these simple steps that can really transform the way that your family comes up with different meal ideas.
[00:03:28] And I think oftentimes we kind of separate. The foods that we either want to eat or have to eat or are eating or whatever it might be with what we should be doing. And what I want you to see is not so much like a virtuous perspective on an ideal, but to make it really real. And so when I think about my family this week and us having this coffee cake breakfast bread, that's gonna be kind of a fun addition to, you know, just our morning menu that we wouldn't always have, that we got at this fun apple mill, all in Tennessee.
[00:03:57] I wanna show you how I would plug that into the meal wheel and incorporate it into our week. So if you find yourself with, you know, fresh banana bread that your mother or mother-in-law brought in town, or you know, it may be donuts that you had left over from the weekend or whatever it might be. It may not be a mainstay and a staple in your morning routine, but I want you to see how we can quickly plug this original idea.
[00:04:22] Of say coffee cake into this meal will. So it becomes something that can very easily become part of our breakfast rotation. And so I'm gonna walk you through some of the steps of how we do this, and this will become a lot more familiar as we go through this each and every Monday. And on my meal times made easy method.
[00:04:38] Episodes, but I want you to see how this method can help you come up with ideas that are truly endless, but at the same time, extremely actionable. So what I want is for, and I'm obviously giving a little bit more preface this week in the talk, just so you're a little bit more familiar with kind of this framework that I use in my meal times made easy course, but what I want you to walk away with from each of these episode, It was just a really simple idea because as I've started adding these Monday episodes in and been sharing different things, what I want is really to narrow it down to something.
[00:05:15] You could just drag and drop, put it into your cart, add it into your meal plan for the week. Take it, run with it. So all of that to say, I wanna go ahead and share with you how this meal wheel would kind of come into play for today's menu item. So if my original idea is kind of this, we have coffee cake.
[00:05:32] I wanna first and foremost think how does this. Within the love it, like it learning it framework first and foremost, if you have an original idea, you wanna ask yourself, is this a food that my child loves? Is this a food that my child is still learning to? Like, or is it somewhere in between? And it's a food that my child likes, but they may or may not eat because this is going to guide our other decision.
[00:05:52] For my kids, they have not had this before. It's something we bought on vacation. It's not like a breakfast bread that I make regularly. And I don't really know if they're going to enjoy it or not. I might know if they like things that are similar, but I'm not sure. So I would probably consider this more of like a, like it or a learning it food.
[00:06:10] And so in that situation, I wanna be building out a breakfast meal that includes a love it food. As well as a, like it food. And in doing this, it helps reassure me that I am offering choices that I know that they enjoy and will eat, but I'm also exposing them to different things, such as this fun food that we just brought back with us from our family trip.
[00:06:31] And so I wanna run through the love it, like, and learning it framework to make sure that I'm providing them nourishment that they'll eat and enjoy, but I'm also exposing them to new options. that they can learn to like, so in this case, the learning it food would be the coffee cake. And then I could do something as simple as yogurt and raspberries as love it.
[00:06:57] And like it foods, yogurt and raspberries really raspberries would be the love it, food and yogurt would be the, like it food. You could also just simplify this and if you know that your child. Loves milk and likes bananas, then just serve it with a cup of milk and bananas. What we're wanting to do is to make sure that we incorporate the love, it, like it, learning it framework while also balancing protein, fat, and fiber so that our children have something to stick with them and to keep them full for longer.
[00:07:24] So that would be the first step. The second step would be. What kind of timeframe are we looking at for breakfast? If this is like a grab and go breakfast that you're eating on your way out, the. coffee cake is pretty ready to go. So in that case, something like one of those like milk boxes that are ready to go, or, you know, a milk and a cup, you could easily just pour from a larger container.
[00:07:44] That's a lot more cost effective. You could just pour that in a cup, grab a banana. Your child could eat this in the car. There's really no time constraints there. However, you have to think through the time to eat these things. So something like a yogurt. Or you know, yogurt and berries would not be as convenient of a grab and go option.
[00:08:02] So when you're thinking through these meal ideas, I want you to think through what kind of time constraints do you have? Not only on meal prep, but also the time it takes to eat the meal itself. And then also to clean up, I know when my son eats yogurt, there is some cleanup required where something like a banana and just a little milk is much quicker to wash up after.
[00:08:23] Next, I want you to think through what's your approach to any of the given foods that you offered, but specifically the learning at food. I wanna think of how we can be really creative and how we can offer it in a way that You know, has just a little bit more intentionality behind it. So the more we can take a learning at food and think specifically to our is if this isn't something that they really enjoy, how can I make it more interesting and maybe add some novelty in, but for something like this, Breakfast bread.
[00:08:53] I might think instead just to offer a small piece because I don't wanna overwhelm them with too large of a portion of a food that they maybe are not interested in, but I could give them something that's engaging that makes this little portion one less intimidating, but two, a little bit more engaging.
[00:09:10] So I might just preload this onto a food pick or say you do have a little bit more time and you're sticking with bananas milk. Coffee cake. Maybe you just cut the coffee cake instead of in a slice. You cut it in little cubes and you skew it with banana slices. So it's just banana slice coffee cake, banana slice coffee cake, banana slice coffee cake.
[00:09:30] And you just put it on a little kabob, stick that your kid can have a couple of milk. It's the same, love it, like it learning it components that we talked about, but you can see how you can really adjust this depending on how your child may interact with these foods. And how your child may engage with these foods to become ultimately more interested and potentially eating them.
[00:09:51] So in my meal tables made easy method. I walk you through the next few phases of this meal wheel process so that you can really feel empowered to begin offering these new ideas that maybe otherwise you would say to yourself, oh, my kid will never eat this. Or why bother buying this fun coffee cake on vacation?
[00:10:11] I bet my kid won't even like it, but instead you see some really actionable ways to go about offering it with feeling some excitement rather than automatic defeat. And so I walk through that process in more depth, but right now, for the sake of time, I just want to close this in a quick prayer. This is something I was doing at the beginning of the first few episodes I did when I launched the podcast.
[00:10:33] And, you know, I just kind of prayed through and had debated through if it was something I wanted to include. And lately I just felt the nudge. Add it back in. So if that's not something that resonates with you, I totally respect that. But I also want you to note that I value you in a way that I pray for you.
[00:10:51] And I pray for this community and I am honored to get to encourage you in the meal times the messes, the moments and the ministry of motherhood. Lord. Thank you so much for these moms. Thank you for the friends that they are and God, you know, my heart to just wish I could pour them a cup of coffee at my kitchen counter with this coffee cake before us.
[00:11:11] But God, I pray that whatever little pearls of wisdom that they might have gotten from today, God, that you will just use it to encourage them. I pray that the starts of their day returning from summer vacations and getting all the laundry undone God, that they will see you in their midst, that they will see the joys from their travels, with their kids and the remnants of those trips through things like coffee cake and that they will not feel a sense of defeat, but God that you will breathe new life into them, breathe new ideas into their home and into their kitchens and into their meal times.
[00:11:43] God and I pray that you'll fuel their. For all the fun that they get to have in these summer days. Lord B love you.
