One of my earliest food memories as a child is sitting down to breakfast on a special day to a bowl of hot, chocolate oatmeal. These special breakfasts didn’t happen often, but I remember what a treat it was to see the bowl of chocolate oatmeal with a mini marshmallow happy face. Chocolate for breakfast? To a kid that’s like the best thing ever! As an adult, chocolate for breakfast is a pretty darn good thing too. That’s why I was happy to find this much healthier version of chocolate oatmeal in my friend Amy’s cookbook, Healthier Chocolate Treats. …

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Oh friends… I don’t know about you, but this time of year I just feel like money is seeping out of my bank account in giant floods. From holiday shopping, to donations here and there, to random household expenses, money just seems to get tighter and tighter.

Because of all the unexpected expenses, I try to really buckle down on planning our meals in December. There’s a cookbook I’ve been using that has helped me a ton, and I thought I’d share it with you! Good Cheap Eats by Jessica Fisher is full of delicious, budget friendly recipes as well as tips and tricks for getting the most bang for your buck when shopping and preparing food. …

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Mornings around our house are usually mass chaos. No matter what I do to try to be organized the night before, mornings don’t seem to change.

In fact, we have a little celebration in the car on the way to school on those rare days where I didn’t have to turn into “raging maniac mom” to get everyone in gear. I’ll say, those little celebrations don’t happen too often. That’s not something I’m necessarily proud of. …

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Fast forward to today… I can’t get enough of old people bread. I love real butter slathered on a slice of whole grain bread or thick oatmeal bread…or “oldmeal” bread….

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Today is pi day…3.14. Since I am a food blogger, I am going to join the masses of others who turn this mathematics focused day into something food related. Pie day.

Pie is much more fun than the actual math related pi, don’t you think? In all honesty, math is not my strong suit. In fact, when I was choosing my major in college, I based it solely on which track had the fewest math classes. Math and I are not compatible.

Sure, my mom always told me “you’ll need to use math all throughout your life” and I was sure she was right, but I also had a lot of confidence in technology and knew that there would be tools out there forever to be my math crutch. What no one warned me about though is that I’d have a math genius for a son…and no one told me how humiliating it might be one day when he needs help with his elementary school homework and I can’t help him because I am pretty much math clueless.

So, as stereotypical as it may be, Jacob and my husband take care of math homework duty. I bake cookies and cakes and delicious breakfast dishes that takes their mind off the fact that mom is not quite so smart when it comes to anything math.

I’m celebrating pi day with a different kind of pie. It’s baked in a pie dish, doesn’t have a crust, and is served for breakfast so it isn’t your traditional kind of pie. However, this baked oatmeal breakfast pie with cinnamon and sugar is the perfect way to start a great day like pi day…even if you don’t love math, you’ll love this special pi pie.

Recipe: Baked Breakfast Oatmeal Pie

• 1/2 cup canned pumpkin
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 Tablespoon baking powder
• 3 cups Quaker instant oats
• 2 Tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 350•
2. Mix together pumpkin and sugar. Add the eggs, milk, salt, baking powder and oatmeal and mix until well blended.
3. Pour into a lightly sprayed glass pie dish.
4. Sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon.
5. Bake for 35 minutes or until firm. Serve hot.

Note – this dish can be assembled ahead of time, refrigerated over night, and baked in the oven the next morning.

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Ever since I came into contact with the folks from the Quaker Chewy Afterschool Rocks program and the After School Alliance, I’ve been trying to think of ways to be more involved with my kids when they get back home from school. I took some time to search through the afterschool toolkit for parents and teachers and came across so many ideas to make afterschool time special. The ideas that I loved the most, though, revolved around cooking. I’ve said time and time again how I think cooking with your kids is teaching them such a vital, lifelong skill and builds strong bonds within the family as well.

Life is crazy around the holidays, and I know how having your kids help you in the kitchen is not always the quickest or easiest route to getting things done, but when time is tight and you want to engage your kids and get some of your holiday baking done at the same time, look to afterschool time to do both.

I needed to make some cookies for a Thanksgiving teacher event, so I decided it would be the perfect project to have my kids help me with.

We got busy in the kitchen. Thankfully this recipe for Quaker’s Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies required two sticks of butter because unwrapping the sticks of butter seems to always be something the girls bicker about when one or the other gets to do it. Who knew opening butter could be so fun? Look at how intense these gals are at getting their task done!

And of course, their next favorite part… adding the sugar. By the way, thank you sooooo much, Auntie Sandie, for teaching them about eating sugar balls!

It is usually after the sugar is all in and the chance of yummy tastes is gone that my sugar lovers lose interest.

Thank goodness Jacob likes to stick around for the rest of the dirty work. He’s pretty darn good at dumping ingredients in and now that he’s in 3rd grade, he can do most of a fairly straightforward recipe without a lot of instruction from me.

Word got out that the dough was ready. Funny how suddenly everyone flocks to the kitchen for a taste when they hear that!

The cookies are in the oven now, so what to do with all that time we have to spend waiting? Well, Leah seemed to have a pretty grand old time with the Quaker Oats container.

And the 15 minutes the cookies took to bake was the perfect amount of time to get homework done for the night!

The cookies are done and now, we have accomplished several goals. We’ve spent some quality afterschool time together in the kitchen. We’ve made a delicious afterschool snack and my Thanksgiving cookies for the school staff are made.

(That is, if the cookies last long enough. These are some darn good cookies… I have to say I’ve been guilty of sneaking a bite here and there!)

Recipe: Quaker Great Pumpkin Cookies (from the Quaker Oats Website)

• 2  cups all-purpose flour
• 1-1/3  cups Quaker® Oats (quick or old fashioned, uncooked)
• 1  teaspoon baking soda
• 1  teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2  teaspoon salt
• 1/2  pound (2 sticks) butter or margarine, softened
• 1  cup granulated sugar
• 1  cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1  cup LIBBY’S® 100% Pure Pumpkin
• 1  large egg
• 1  teaspoon vanilla
• 3/4  cup chopped walnuts (we omitted)
• 3/4  cup raisins (we omitted)
• Decorating icings, semi-sweet chocolate chips, candies, raisins or nuts (optional)

Heat oven to 350°F. Grease baking sheets.

In medium bowl, combine flour, oats, baking soda, cinnamon and salt; mix well. In large bowl, beat butter and sugars with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add pumpkin, egg and vanilla; mix well. Add flour mixture; mix well. Stir in nuts and raisins (we omitted). Drop 1/4 cup dough onto prepared baking sheet; spread into 3-inch circle or oval. Repeat with remaining dough.

Bake 14 to 16 minutes or until cookies are firm and lightly browned. Cool 2 minutes on baking sheets; remove to wire racks. Cool completely. Decorate as desired with icing, chips, candies, raisins or nuts. Makes 20 large cookies.

I have been compensated by Quaker Chewy to be a partner with this great program, however, any opinions stated within this post are my own.

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