Breakfast is my least favorite meal of the day. Not because I don’t like to eat it, don’t get me wrong.  I LOVE to eat breakfast.  Eggs, bacon, sausage, and a few slices of a nice, ripe tomato picked straight from the garden.  Yum.  That would start my morning off right.

No, it’s definitely not my least favorite meal of the day because I don’t like to eat it.  It’s my least favorite meal of the day because it starts the morning off with a mess to clean up.  And since I clean the kitchen really thoroughly every night, I want to keep it reasonably clean at least through the mornings, which means that my kids get very simple breakfasts that are easy to clean up.  Cereal and fruit, oatmeal, or yogurt and peanut butter toast.  Things like that.  Unless my husband is home and feels like making breakfast, which he usually does on the weekends.

Recently, I was looking through my food pins and saw this smoothie recipe, from Sing for Your Supper, and I thought that smoothies would be a perfect quick, easy to clean up breakfast option.  And low and behold, I had everything I needed to try Sing for  Your Supper’s recipe:  Ice, honey, unsweetened vanilla soy milk (you can also use the sweetened variety, or even cow or almond milk), Greek yogurt (adds protein and gives it a creamy consistency), strawberries (I used frozen because it was what I had), blueberries, a peach, a banana, and raw spinach leaves.

Smoothies are pretty hard to mess up.  You basically just blend your ice with a little of each of the various fruit that you want to add, a squirt or two of honey, your milk, a few spoonfuls of yogurt, and a handful of spinach.  The spinach may sound like a strange addition to you, but it does nothing to the flavor and adds all sorts of vitamins and nutrients.  Just slop everything in your blender, put the lid on, and start blending.  It’s thick, so I stopped it periodically and stirred it to be sure everything got nice and uniformly chopped and blended.

he likes it A blender full of smoothie goodness will make about four 8-ounce servings.  His Majesty drinks portion of smoothie served in “his” “shot cup”.

Yep.  I serve my two year old smoothies in a shot glass.

It may sound strange, but it was too thick for him to drink from a straw cup, and he’s not quite ready to handle a larger cup (see above about how I don’t want to clean up a mess in the morning…), so the 2 ounce shot glass holds a perfect amount.  He devours it, and then asks for more.  We keep topping him off until we run out of smoothie, and in the end, he gets about an 8 ounce serving… well, maybe 7 ounces.  About an ounce ends up on his face and placemat, which is pretty minimal given the damage the boy can do with even something simple like a piece of toast.  He really likes smoothies, though, and now asks for one every morning.

Christopher was skeptical of the spinach addition until he tasted it.  Then he sucked his drink down, too.  You can’t taste the spinach at all, and it adds tons of vitamins and nutrients to the blend.  The more spinach you add to your mixture, the less pink your smoothie will be, but it will still taste good even if the color looks a bit funky.  He didn’t really care for smoothies until I started adding peaches to them, after having been inspired by this recipe.  Before that, I’d only made them with berries and bananas.  The peaches are a perfect addition.  The riper the better, too, so if you have a peach that is too squishy to eat, toss it in the blender.

If you don’t have everything in the recipe, no worries.  Smoothies are very forgiving.  Give it a try.  Clean up will consist of cleaning the blender and the cutting board.  Oh, and here’s an easy way to clean you blender.  Fill it up about 2/3 of the way with warm water, then put the lid on and turn it on.  Then dump the liquid off, and you won’t have to scrub your blender as much to get it all clean.

What is your favorite breakfast meal?

When I first pinned this recipe for Pizza Popcorn from All Recipes, it made me think of my trip to NYC with my sweet Grandma.  Because I’m extremely anxious at the airport, I always arrive way too early, anticipating that TSA will have security backed up like Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point (which is actually worth the wait, so if you get the chance to ride it, DO IT), and I usually end up with a bit of time to wander around the airport.  Usually I pick up a few Sugar Free Red Bulls (because obviously an energy rush does wonders for pre flight jitters…) and maybe some almonds, which costs about $35… ok not that much, but way more than what I’d pay “on the outside” (Have you ever seen Jerry Seinfeld’s act where he talks about the airport (check out what he says at 2 mins, 20 seconds)?  Too funny!).  But Delta’s terminal at LaGuardia… Seriously lacking in Sugar Free Red Bull.  And, to add insult to injury, there are no Pepsi products to be had, so a girl couldn’t even get a Diet Pepsi.

Which left me only one viable option.

Alcohol.

Now, I’m not a big drinker, mainly because I don’t like the taste… and I’m a light weight… and I only drink sugar free or diet drinks to mix my alcohol in.  So, since I mentioned before that I had a lack of choices in the beverage department, I grabbed a Diet Sprint from a store front, and had the bartender pour me a big old glass of Stoli (for $9.00), and bring me an empty glass and a few packets of splenda, so that I could mix up my own drinks.  Diet Sprint, Vodka, and a packet of splenda.  It’s actually not bad, as it sort of reminds me of a Vodka Collins.  And it’s low carb, which is always a bonus for me.

While I was (mixing my own drink) at the bar, a man sat down next to me, and ordered some pizza popcorn.  I didn’t think much of it until it arrived at the table.

And then the smell wafted over to me… so I ordered some, too.

And while that man next to me had some leftover in his bowl an hour later when I got up to get to my gate, my bowl had long since been emptied.  I even told my husband and Christopher about this miracle creation when I got home, as I summarized the many trip highlights.

Now, I love popcorn.  And I generally like it served with only butter and salt.  That’s it.  No chocolate, so white cheddar, no seasoned salt, just plain salt and butter.  But I made an exception for this stuff.  I LOVED pizza popcorn.

And, as luck would have it, I found the recipe.  And unlike at the airport, it won’t cost you $9.50 to make it.  Promise.

Here’s what All Recipes says you’ll need:

Start by preheating your oven to 350, and air popping yourself some popcorn.  Or make it in the microwave, using a paper bag.  That’s what I did.

Then you combine the melted butter with the parmesan cheese, garlic salt, regular salt, onion powder, basil, and oregano.

This is where I diverted from instruction in the source recipe.  I dumped all of my popcorn into a (obviously new and clean, and otherwise empty) kitchen trash bag, poured my butter and combined spices in with it (I let the melted butter cool down a bit before doing this… a melted plastic bag would mean a BIG mess, so I suggest you do the same), twisted the end of the bag to hold it shut, and shoot everything up to combine it really well.  This yummy spice and butter combination needs to be on every single kernel, trust me, and this method works well.  It’s how I make monkey munch, (aka holiday snack mix) too.

After shaking everything up, put it into an ungreased 13x9x2 baking dish, and bake on 350 for about 15 minutes on the center rack. But be careful, and keep an eye on it, as some of the reviews reported that their popcorn burnt before the 15 minutes.  Mine did not, but you never know, and there are few smells worse than burnt popcorn, so be sure to check on it from time to time.

When you’re done, it will smell amazing.  It will look like regular popcorn…  you almost can’t see the seasoning that is going to make your taste buds beg for more.

But when you taste it… OMG…

I ate it all in about 20 minutes.

Yeah, baby.  I’m ecstatic to report that it tastes exactly like the pizza popcorn at LaGuardia.  Except you don’t have to be in the airport, carting around your carry on luggage, praying that your flight leaves on time.

It’s perfect for a snack spread at poker night, or at any casual get together.  The next time that you have a taste for a snack, give this a try.  Then come back and tell me how you liked it!!