Morford - Rise and Shine

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mornings can be hectic, but registered dietitian, cook, and mom Katie Morford has the key to a saner, healthier way to start the day. With 75 recipesquick and easy for weekdays, slow and luxurious for relaxed weekendsyou can turn your morning into an exercise in good nutrition and great taste. Youll find breakfasts that can be eaten at the table (Egg-in-a-Nest Pesto Pizzas), at the bus stop (Strawberries and Cream Spoon Smoothies), or on the run (Milk and Cereal Bars), all healthy alternatives to cold cereal and prepackaged bars that even picky eaters will love. Rise & Shine is tailor made for busy families who want to do morning just a little bit better. Its a toolkit of ideas and inspiration to make a nourishing breakfast not only doable, but delicious.

This book contains page number references throughout from the original print edition. Hyperlinks have been added for easier navigation.

since my kids were tiny, Ive begun many mornings with a little ritual that involves poking my head into their bedrooms and whispering, Rise and shine... , just loud enough to wake them from their sleep. Its exactly how my own mom roused my siblings and me when we were growing up, a practice that starts the day off on a note hopeful enough to coax children from the comfort of warm beds.

But this gentle waking is often (usually?) followed by chaos. So much needs to happen between sleep and the start of the school day. There are showers to take, beds to make, outfits to choose, shoes to tie, backpacks to fill, lunches to pack, and teeth to brush. And this is just the practical side of the story. It doesnt even take into account the child who wont get up, the one who must be prodded along every step of the routine, the one having a bad hair day or a wrong side of the bed day. And then there is all that needs to happen for parents, some of whom have been up half the night with a baby or working into the wee hours for a boss who doesnt care that they have a family to get out the door.

As a result, what should be the priority of the morningbreakfastbecomes an after-thought. The meal we all hear is the most important of the day, especially for kids, becomes a flying by the seat of our pants postscript. Its reduced to shoveling in a few bites of Cheerios while pulling on winter coats, scarfing down a cereal bar en route to the bus, sometimes, or eating nothing at all.

This book is the answer to every parent who has struggled to get breakfast on the tableand to get their child to actually eat it. It comes from my personal experience in making family meals for the past seventeen years, a job Ive managed without relying heavily on the beguiling lineup of supermarket convenience foods.

Inside this book youll find recipes for seventy-five breakfast favorites, most of which are entry-level easy, with a generous number requiring no more than five to ten minutes of hands-on time. Youll also discover many dishes that can be made ahead, so the only requirement for eating breakfast in the morning is, well, to eat breakfast. The recipes draw on my expertise as both a registered dietitian and a culinary professional, which means they balance good nutrition with good taste. Every last one was rigorously vetted by my own team of in-house criticsotherwise known as my childrenand then tested by a small army of parent and teen recipe testers.

In the process of writing this book, nearly everyone I spoke to responded the same way: with an enthusiastic I LOOOOVE breakfast. Yet, many of these same folks confessed that breakfast often gets the shaft. This book intends to change that. It honors our passion for the first meal of the day by arming you with recipes and inspiration for those 260 week-day mornings a year that can make or break a healthful diet. The aim, ultimately, is to give you and your kids something to really rise and shine about. Breakfast!

whether or not breakfast truly is the most important meal of the day is up for debate. Id argue that all meals matter because, collectively, they form the balance of our diet: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Whats unique about breakfast, though, is that by the time morning arrives, most of us have been without a bite to eat for somewhere in the neighborhood of twelve hours. It makes sense that our bodies need refueling, particularly children, who have smaller tanks that need to be topped off regularly.

There is plenty of research demonstrating the upside of getting breakfast under your belt, particularly where kids are concerned. Studies have found that children and teens who take in a morning meal tend to do better in school through improved memory, ability to concentrate, and better test grades. Kids also benefit socially, due to improved mood and better social interactions with teachers and classmates. In addition, eating breakfast is linked with lower body weight and less weight gain over time. Among children and adolescents, breakfast eaters have been shown to be less likely to be overweight, while breakfast skippers are at higher risk for being overweight or obese.

Lets not forget something a little less measurable but no less important: breakfast is an opportunity for family timeto sit across the table from one another over a bowl of oatmeal or to stand at the stove together and scramble a pan of eggs. Between busy school and work schedules, the morning may be the only quality time your family has all day.

So yes, breakfast does matter, but heres the rub: not all meals are created equal.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD BREAKFAST?

Great question. What, really, does a balanced breakfast look like? Recently, a group of nutrition experts gathered research and put their heads together to decide just that. In a nutshell, they concluded that breakfast should:

Make up 15 to 25 percent of daily calories from a combination of carbohydrates, protein, and healthy fats.

Feature sensible portions based on age, gender, and daily energy needs.

Make a generous dent in our daily nutrient requirements, with a goal of at least 20 percent for as many nutrients as possible.

Emphasize nutrient-dense foodsthat is, foods that pack in a lot of nutrition for the amount of calories delivered.

Ideally, be made up of at least three of the food groupsthat is, grains, fruits, vegetables, protein foods, and dairy foods.