Monday Muffins, or the Importance of Traditions

I cook a lot around here, and in order to avoid going crazy I always try to simplify our menus and meal plans. But my kids don't like eating the same thing day after day, and neither do I, to be honest. To meet the dual needs of simplicity and variety I have a weekly breakfast menu that I stick to every week.

Mondays are oatmeal day. I like oatmeal, my kids tolerate it. I like to start the week with an easy meal that I can have ready the night before (I soak the oats overnight with a little wheat flour and whey to maximize their nutrition and digestibility, since I know you were dying to know why I prepare them the night before...) It makes me feel like I can handle Monday, to know our breakfast is ready when we wake up (well, I have to turn the stove on to actually cook the oats, but I can handle that much even on a Monday!)

Anyway, the one thing about oats is that it's always hard to determine exactly how much to make with my two kids. Sometimes they eat, like, four bowls each. Sometimes they eat one tiny bowl and they're done. Fortunately, other mothers before me have had this dilemma, and my friend Kerry pointed me to Soule Mama's recipe for Leftover Oatmeal Muffins.

Now, any of you who know me, know that I am never going to just cook a recipe as it is. So the first time I made these muffins on a Monday with our leftover oatmeal I added chocolate and coconut. They were yummy. The kids loved having a special Monday snack-treat and I loved not wasting any leftover oatmeal.

The next Monday I had a bunch of apples, and I thought...apple pie muffins! The kids liked those even more, and then they had the idea that every Monday we should try a new variation of muffin recipe with our leftover oatmeal. And a tradition was born.

This tradition has become a fun part of our weeks, a good way to kick off the week with an easy breakfast for me, followed by fun experimentation in the kitchen, and a relatively healthy snack for the kids.

We've done coconut, chocolate chip, various fruits, and this week we made orange-blueberry-cherry muffins, and Justin declared them his favorite yet. I tried to get a picture of them but when I went to the cooling rack to take it, I realized they kids had already eaten eight. (Well, maybe Eric had one, but the kids ate the rest. We don't have an appetite problem here!)

We have lots of ideas for the future: peanut butter, chocolate-peanut butter! cherry-vanilla! pumpkin! You get the idea. But more importantly, we have a small weekly tradition that the kids look forward to (and that I enjoy, too.)

I know a lot of people older and wiser than me have written about the importance of traditions for children, so I will only say that I can certainly see how important they are for my kids. When we were staying in hotels, looking for a place to live, and generally in flux, the lack of routine (and of our weekly traditions like muffin-baking) were hard on the kids. So here's to Monday Muffins, and to other family traditions that provide our kids anchors in time to look forward to and to feel secure in. (Also, if you have any flavor suggestions you think we should try, let me know!)