National Better Breakfast Month: Making Morning Eggs Much More Exciting, Plus the Right Color

Breakfast was usually the easiest meal when the kids were little. It often didn’t involve stoves or more than two ingredients (1. Cereal, 2. Milk). I ran from stoves and more then two ingredients every chance I got. When I was really, really tired, I didn’t even bother with dishes. I just tossed a toaster waffle (1. Waffle, 2. Toaster) onto the table cloth—vinyl for easy clean up—and they’d have at it. My sister remembers coming over one morning when I was like a zombie. I just called the kids into the kitchen, and standing near them, opened the Cheerios box and simply poured the cereal onto the floor. Breakfast is served, dear lovely children, said the exhausted mother. They got multivitamins, to cover if they should have had some fruits or vegetables in there somewhere.

​But once in a while, we got a real treat, like if we made waffles from scratch (I really hated those waffle recipes, those kind that called for at least five ingredients with lots of little annoying measuring spoons and required whipping of egg whites and stupid things like that. If God wanted eggs to be separated into white and yellow, they would have come that way.) (Oh, wait...) Anyway, sometimes the kids got a treat when I’d slept the night and could muster up the courage to face all those wicked machinations of cooking like mixing bowls and measuring cups and dumb additives like baking soda, baking powder, baking dishes. I made hot food for them a little more often once I discovered Krusteaz pancake and waffle mixes. That, my friends, changed my life. I could deal with using the stupid measuring cup for a couple of scoops then adding water. Right up my alley.
 
One day, I decided to go all out. Inspired by Dr. Suess, I thought the kids should have more than just Green eggs with their ham. Green was Charlie’s color. Everyone should have eggs in their own color. So I made scrambled eggs for everyone in all the correct colors. At the time, Charlie was experimenting with adding a secondary color—Orange—because Pierce got two colors since not everything could be found in Purple or everything found in Yellow. Over time, Orange didn’t stick, so these days, Charlie (aka Charles) does just Green. But once I got going with the project, I didn’t even mind making another batch to include Orange. (1. Eggs, 2. Food Coloring)
 
Their mouths turned colors for a while, but really, what did that matter? At least they were in the correct colors!