Honoring National School Breakfast Week

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| Category: from the Farm Staff

By Chela Cooper

Baltimore City Public Schools celebrates National School Breakfast Week on March 7-11, 2016 to highlight the importance of starting every school day with a healthy breakfast. Every day in City Schools, all students receive free breakfast and lunch in school cafeterias through the USDA’s Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), School Breakfast Program (SBP), and National School Lunch Program (NSLP).   

At Great Kids Farm, we use the MyPlate food paradigm as an educational tool to help students learn about the five food groups. As a fruit and vegetable farm, we have abundant examples of fresh fruits and veggies to fill half your plate at every meal. For breakfast, fruit is an obvious option. Stir berries into a cup of yogurt, or a handful of dried fruit into a bowl of oatmeal or cold breakfast cereal. Blend frozen fruit with milk for a fruit smoothie. Whole fruit such as bananas, apples, and oranges are great to pack for breakfast on the go.

Vegetables are excellent on your breakfast plate, too. Have you considered a breakfast burrito with scrambled eggs, spinach, bell pepper, and red onion? Try some avocado on your morning toast or add a slice of ripe tomato to your egg sandwich. Stir some shredded carrots into your pancake batter or add steamed beets to your breakfast smoothie. 

Squaffles are a student pick for a delicious breakfast food. This twist on a traditional waffle features winter squash. The recipe can be made with steamed or roasted acorn squash, butternut squash, or pumpkin. Canned pumpkin can also be used. Squaffles can be made ahead of time and frozen for an easy heat-and-serve breakfast. For a demo on how to make these squaffles, check out Great Kids Farm recipe page.

Squaffles

  1. Preheat a waffle iron.
  2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the following dry ingredients:
    • 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour OR whole wheat pastry flour
    • 4 teaspoons baking powder
    • ½ teaspoon cinnamon
    • ¼ cup sugar
    • 1 teaspoon salt
  3. In a medium mixing bowl, combine the following wet ingredients:
    • 1 ¼  cups milk
    • 2 tablespoons butter, melted
    • 3 large eggs
    • ¾  cup cooked winter squash OR canned pumpkin
  4. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients.  Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and whisk just until ingredients are blended.
  5. Follow directions for your waffle maker to cook the squaffle batter until the squaffles are crisp and slightly brown at the edges.
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