Cereal Benefits and Breakfast Choices (Plus One Final Giveaway and an Awesome Recipe...)

Behold!  My fourth and final post about cereal.  Well, not necessarily, as I tend to blog about stuff I like, and since I happen to like cereal very much, you may find me mentioning it again from time to time.  Like every time I feel like telling the world I had cereal for dinner again.  Or like when I want to tell everyone that Samantha has finally decided to eat cereal in milk.  Oh, actually, I can say that now, I think, since I was just informed that at school the other day her teacher was eating a bowl of cereal and walked away for a moment.  When she returned, Samantha had taken her spoon and was eating it herself!  Not like I condone this behavior, but I am secretly pleased...

Cereal benefits, especially those that I have discovered while writing this intriguing series of posts, definitely impact my family's breakfast choices.  Well, maybe not Steve's, but mine and my choices for Samantha (she gets minimal choice in the matter) are impacted.  Before I start in on the facts, I would like to tell you all about the amazing pancakes I have made twice now!  You may ask, "Pancakes?  In a post about cereal?"  Why, yes, indeed.  After reading about how incredible the nutrient content is in a bowl of Cheerios, I decided to try to get those same nutrients into Samantha's favorite breakfast food, pancakes.  Note that I am not a cook in any way, shape or form, and have only once made pancakes on my own, but I figured, eh, they're easy, and if they fail miserably, I still have the frozen kind in the fridge just waiting to be popped into the toaster.

Here's the recipe, the basic portion of which was mostly stolen off the web, but modified with my two perfect additions:

Blueberry Cheerio Pancakes

3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup crushed Cheerios (I mercilessly rolled them in wax paper with a rolling pin)
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons sugar (optional)
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups milk (we use skim)
crushed (mushed) fresh blueberries (just put in however much you like)
1 egg
2 - 3 tablespoons oil

Mix the dry ingredients together, then add the milk, oil and eggs. Mix well and try to get some of the lumps out of the batter. Don't worry about making it perfectly smooth. It will be fine.  Stir in blueberries.

Heat a non-stick skillet on medium heat. When heated, scoop the pancake batter recipe into the frying pan with a large spoon to make individual pancakes. The pan will probably only take 1 or two pancakes at a time. Cook on one side until the top begins to bubble, then flip over and cook briefly on the other side.

Because of the Cheerios these pancakes will not be light and fluffy, but thinner and denser, but still very delicious.  :-)

And voila!  I swear, these were soooooooo good.

Now back to the facts...

I may have mentioned this before, but cereal eaters tend to have healthier body weights.  This includes people who eat the sweetened cereal varieties, so there should be no guilt attached to those.  Samantha actually had Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast this morning (dry, of course...).  Oh, and did you know that Honey Nut Cheerios was just named America's Favorite Cereal?  Yum.

And I know you hear a lot about whole grains and that they're important, but did you know why they're important?  They contain vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and hundreds of other phytonutrients (from Wikipedia:  phytonutrients = plant-based micronutrients that contain protective, disease-preventing compounds).  General Mills cereals contain at least 8 grams of whole grain per serving, and more than 20 GM cereals contain 16 grams or more (with a recommended daily allowance of 48).  An excellent way to start your day.

Okay, I got you to read to the bottom of my post, and hopefully inspired at least a few of you - now it's time for the giveaway!!  One of my oh-so-lucky readers will win a Stay Fit DLX Cereal to Go - EZ Freeze container, provided by General Mills through MyBlogspot.com.  Just leave a comment before Monday and tell me if any of the information I've posted about cereal benefits was a surprise to you, and if this information will change the way you think about your children's breakfast!   

By the way, congratulations to Lacey, winner of the last giveaway!