Let's take a sec and talk breakfast! Now I am and really always have been a breakfast guy. I know most people don't eat breakfast - unless they stop in at the drive-thru and get something to go with their morning coffee on the way to work. I know I've been there - little hard to make a healthy breakfast when we've spent the first hour of our morning hitting the snooze button! Well, for me, even as an adult, I never really shook the morning bowl of breakfast cereal. I might be a bit of an odd duck - I can't be the only one, right?
Well, since I've committed to really focusing on my fitness and nutrition this year, I took a look at what my morning bowl of cereal was providing me. Yeah, not much! And since the morning's are usually spent (hitting the snooze) hustling to get out the door and off to work, there's just not much time to prepare a healthy breakfast. So, I started looking for some prepping ideas that I could throw together on Sunday and be good to go for the week. My wife and I have been following the 21 Day Fix meal plan so it had to be something that fit into the container system methodology.
I came across a Beachbody blog about meal prepping. It had a breakfast idea putting some healthy eats into a mason jar that I thought would be perfect - grab and go. I'm calling mine "Mason Parfaits." The first time I made them, the girls helped me, and we used granola. They were ecstatic! "This is so good daddy! Can we do these again?" Hey, we got a winner! So we decided to make them again. This time we opted for the healthier choice of old fashioned rolled oats. Let's just say, it didn't go over quite so well! They let me know right away that they preferred the granola! Needless to say, I had a few extra mason parfaits to eat last week!
Assembly is pretty easy - just put it all in the Mason jar! I have found that I don't like my oats to be too soggy so, I put those on the bottom and then I put the fruit in before the yogurt. Don't be afraid to play with different fruits - the blog had raspberries but I like the strawberry and blueberry combination. And you may want to reduce the oats a bit, 2 may be a bit much for you so cut it down to 1. These have been perfect to throw in the lunchbox and have at work. Especially the mornings that the alarm clock wins the battle of the snooze!
What's in it?
Old fashioned rolled oats (kids prefer the crunch of granola better) - 2 yellows
Plain low fat yogurt - 1 red
Strawberries and blueberries - 1 purple
Chia seeds - 1 orange
Dried Goji Berries - 1 blue