Chocolate Protein Pancakes: My Breastfeeding Go To!
Breakfast ideas
**QUICK RECIPE POST FROM MY INSTAGRAM CAPTION** The protein pancakes I started basically every day with after having Roey, with Clayton it was a protein waffle with Roey is was…
If you’ve followed us for any amount of time, you know as a family we’re really investing in reducing waste. It’s actually a really fun challenge for me to find life hacks for eliminating the places we create waste throughout our home and lives! On Friday our baby food ebook The Whole Food Baby drops (I’m so excited!) but ahead of that this week I’ve partnered with Vitamix and Stasher to show you a recipe that we used day in and day out to feed Clayton that reduced our waste around feeding a baby. There’s a chapter on food waste in the ebook but here’s a snapshot for you!
This blender is the Vitamix Ascent Series A3500 in White – tons of you asked about my experience with it after I posted on Instagram stories so I’ve written about that at the end of this post.
INGREDIENTS:
2 ‘ice’ cubes of grass fed milk kefir
1/2 sliced frozen banana
1/4 cup frozen zucchini slices (about 3 round slices)
1/4 cup frozen or fresh blueberries
1/4 – 1/2 cup filtered water
Tip #1: When I buy something in a bottle or something that I want to spread out over a longer time than it stays fresh, I freeze it in my stainless
steel ice cube tray, pop out the individual cubes and store them in a Stasher Bag. Then I can grab 2 cubes of raw milk for a latte for Jared, a couple of cubes of prune juice when one of the kids needs it’s medicinal powers (!), or a few cubes of kefir for this smoothie when we want a probiotic boost.
Tip #2: Make baby food that the whole family wants to eat. We kept as many of our ‘baby food’ recipes as possible as things that we’d all want to eat. That way if there are extras we all dive in, if baby doesn’t eat it one of us will happily (or we refreeze the extras in the ice cube tray again.) Also if we’re going to talk about waste, wasting time is not something any mum wants to do so a one size fits all recipe is my jam.
DIRECTIONS:
Simply add all the ingredients with 1/4 cup water to the Vitamix. Starting on a slow speed, blend everything together. Add extra water as needed to help everything blend together, and increase the speed stirring intermittently until you have a thick smooth creamy ice cream texture that you can spoon into a bowl!
I used the word flexible because it’s perfect for spoon feeding, self/baby led feeding, older toddler feeding… and hungry parent feeding! Simple banana based ‘ice creams’ were actually one of Clayton’s very first foods and we let him spoon blueberry versions just a few months into eating. We’d load up the spoon, he went to town!
The leftovers can then be scraped back into the ice cube tray and frozen ready for the next smoothie or smoothie bowl, or added into oatmeal. Just make sure that once they’re frozen you pop them out of the ice cube tray and store them sealed so they don’t start to taste like the freezer! I throw them into a Stasher Bag because I broke up with plastic Ziplocks!
Spoon any leftovers back into the ice cube tray and freeze for another time!
Note: Usually I avoid anything with any blender during nap time – sacred nap times are not worth any level of glory the blender could churn out.) but I risked it and made this during nap time ready for Clayton to wake up and the Vitamix DID NOT wake either baby. Someone messaged me and said they find this version quieter than other ones and I’ll second that. Just a helpful note for parents!
It’s been a while since I’ve used a Vitamix (about 5 years) and so far I’m loving this one. I’ve written about the blender I’ve used in place of the Vitamix for the last few years but after using this one for a few weeks I’m passing on the other version and switching to this – I’m in love with it! If for nothing else, some genius at Vitamix came up with a tool that will change your life. Jared always teases me for how much I try to clean out the blender with a spoon so this hugely saved me and whatever blender you have I highly recommend you grab this little scraper tool that goes UNDER the blades to get out every last morsel! Worth every cent of the $15!!
It has a ton more setting than I’ve managed to try out yet, and love that it now has small cups to attach as well as the big blender jars – you can see all its bells and whistles on the video on the Vitamix site.
