Think Outside The Box Challenge: Final Thoughts

We did it (pretty much)!  We went an entire month without eating cereal for breakfast!  You can see all that we had to eat here.  Sure, there were a few mornings when Jesse and the boys wanted cereal instead of what I had planned, and we had the trip to Michigan for my Grandma's funeral where we were limited to what our hotel offered, but otherwise, this month was a success!

I had a few goals for this challenge:

• Spend less money on boxes of cereal.  I think I bought 4 boxes of cereal that were part of a deal, and spent only a couple dollars on them.  Success!
• Make more REAL food.  I did a lot of baking.  We ate oatmeal.  We had eggs.  Overall, we ate a lot of items with ingredients I can pronounce.  Success!
• Try new recipes.  (See list below) Success!

New Recipes That We Tried (in no particular order):

• Fruit Salad with Orange Yogurt Dressing  (light and refreshing)
• Peanut Butter Honey Nut Granola  (definitely delicious)
• Breakfast Grilled Cheese (not a hit, but I didn't follow the recipe)
• Whole Wheat Chocolate Pancakes (awesome and they freeze well too)
• Peanut Butter Banana Oatmeal Muffins (filling and easy to make)
• Oatmeal Packets Without The Packets (good fill-in breakfast when we don't have anything made)
• Pancake & Sausage Muffins (one of my surprise favorites of the month, and easy to make a lot and freeze)
• Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Baked Oatmeal (needs sugar, or frosting, but with sugar)
• Strawberry Banana Smoothies (my kids don't like smoothies, but I love them)
• Cinnamon Roll Muffins (dry, but they're already terrible enough for you without adding MORE butter)

I found that we did best when breakfast was already set to go, even if that meant taking a few minutes the afternoon or evening beforehand to make it up.  The good news is that most of the breakfasts I picked were ones that I could make ahead of time.  The ones that weren't, especially the eggs, got substituted for something else a lot of the time.  I already kind of knew this about myself, but now I know for sure: if we are going to eat things besides cereal for breakfast, I need to make sure to have them ready to go before I go to bed.

So what now?  My goal is to continue to have non-cereal breakfasts at least 4-5 mornings a week.  Cereal can still be an option, but I'd rather have it be a once-in-awhile thing than an everyday occurrence.  Since I am continuing to add recipes to my Pinterest boards, and we've found some new favorites, this shouldn't be a problem, as long as I keep planning ahead.  Look for breakfast to continue to appear on the meal plans on Mondays!