Hooray Dad

Tag: Carbohydrates

  • Hella Easy Overnight Oats

    As Dad, my job in the mornings is to prepare brekkie for the little one as well as their lunchbox for school. This leaves me little time to get my own breakfast going, which is why I like to keep our fridge stocked with overnight oats.

    I can bang out a week’s worth of oat meals at the start of the week and dip into them whenever I’m feeling peckish.

    The chia seeds are such a cheat code for loading up on fiber and omega-3’s to start the day. When we eat them we usually add a generous scoop of peanut butter and a handful of fruit—blueberries or bananas usually.

    While this recipe already replaces cow’s milk with nut milks, you can make this extra lactose-free by dropping the yogurt from the recipe.

    For jars, we’ve recycled our Santa Cruz Organics peanut butter jars to use for our oats, but mason jars or any other container works just fine. I like the uniformity. You can tell we eat a lot of peanut butter.

    Ingredients (per jar)

    • 1/2 cup of rolled oats
    • 1 tbsp chia seeds
    • 1 tbsp or more of yogurt
    • 3/4 cup of milk or milk alternative.
    • Water to top off

    Steps to make overnight oats

    1. Add the oats, chia seeds, and yogurt to a jar
    2. Add the milk and/or water until the dry goods are covered
    3. Cap the jar and shake well
    4. Store in the fridge overnight. You can eat them after 20-30 minutes if you’re craving it now.

    Optional mix-ins

    I like to add these right before eating so they don’t get soggy/stale/overripe.

    • 1-2 tsbp of granola
    • 1 tbsp of peanut butter or other nut butter
    • 1/2 banana, sliced
    • Handful of blueberries

  • Homemade Organic Chickpea Blueberry Pancakes

    What toddler doesn’t love a good blueberry pancake? This dad loves them too, which is why I make them almost every weekend.

    However, our toddler is on the low end of the growth chart, so we’ve been looking for ways to increase the nutritional content of this deliciously carb-heavy dish.

    Enter the chickpea. Chickpea flour is our way of piggybacking a lot more protein into the batter. A single cup of chickpea flour has around 20g of extra protein.

    Long story short—our toddler loved them!

    Recipe

    Cookware

    We’ve updated our kitchen to use all stainless steel or glass in order to eliminate as much plastics and non-stick surface exposure as possible.

    • Large mixing bowl
    • Measuring cup
    • Fish turner or spatula
    • Stainless steel pan

    Ingredients

    Wherever we can, we will use organic supplies. For animal products, we will look for pasture-raised and/or 100% grasssfed.

    • 2 cups whole wheat flour / organic
    • 1 cup chickpea flour / organic
    • 2 tsp baking soda
    • 1 cup Greek yoghurt / a2 organic
    • 1.5 cup milk / 100% pasture, organic, whole
    • 2 tsp vanilla extract / organic
    • 3 tbsp brown sugar / organic
    • 6 tbsp melted butter / organic, unsalted
    • 2 eggs / pasture, organic

    Steps

    1. Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl with a well scooped out in the center. This is a great step for your little sous-chef to help with.
    2. Melt the butter in your pan, transfer to well in bowl. Keep the pan on low heat for later.
    3. Add milk, yoghurt, vanilla extract. Stir together
    4. Beat the eggs in a separate container, then pour into the bowl mix
    5. Fold it all up until well-combined, but not super smooth. You want a little clumpiness, but no bundles of dry flour.
    6. With a spoon and silicone spatula, scoop out a wad of batter onto the pan at the 12 o’clock position. Use the spatula to flatten the batter a bit if it doesn’t spread out evenly.
    7. Repeat around the pans edge, spacing the batter discs out so they have room to expand.
    8. While the batter is still fresh, add your blueberries, pressing them into the batter. Great if you can get it completely into the batter so that the blueberry juice doesn’t run out onto the pan when you flip it.
    9. Flip when the bottom is a golden brown. Use the fish turner to take a peek—you can usually tell it’s ready to go when air bubble holes start appearing in the top of the batter. Be patient and only flip once!
    10. Remove when both sides are nicely browned, but not burnt.
    11. Repeat 6-10 until you’ve used up all of your batter and blueberries.