Whole Wheat Pancakes (Vegan) with fruit

This is a healthy and very tasty pancake recipe you can make for your kids, without the bad ingredients in packaged mixes, and with the benefits of ground flax seed (fiber, protein, Omega 3s) and whole wheat flour (protein, fiber).

These are topped with lots of fresh fruit, instead of syrup, or you can make your own fruit syrup (put pears or peaches in the food processor, add a little honey or pure maple syrup).

I based this off of a recipe I got when I was a missionary in Brazil. The friend who gave it to me was American, so these are not Brazilian pancakes unfortunately. :) But these are way better than any packaged mix I've had.

Whole Wheat Pancakes (Vegan)

These are not raw, but with the loads of fruit piled on top, your meal can be mostly raw! (See below) 

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup unsweetened Almond Milk (or Rice Milk) (add a little more for a thinner consistency)

1/2 banana, mashed (this is the egg substitute)

2 Tbsp raw honey

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

3 Tbsp ground flaxseed

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 1/2 Tbsp olive oil

Mix all ingredients and cook on medium heat, flipping once until done. Enjoy!

Special thanks to my husband for making these delicious pancakes this morning and adding the banana instead of egg (because we were all out) to make them vegan. He always makes the pancakes at our house and they always turn out great- way better than I make them. Thanks babe!

Day 27- Satisfied with fruit for breakfast

I have been eating a big fruit salad every morning for the past 27 days or so, with about 3 whole fruits (pear, apple, banana, or orange) chopped up, and sometimes hemp seed, sometimes sunflower or pumpkin seeds, sometimes walnuts or almonds. My goal was to eat the fruit first, then eat any type of grain if I was still hungry (oatmeal, toast, cereal with almond milk, etc). At first this felt strange to eat fruit first- I was accustomed to eating cereal to fill me up, and then a little fruit afterwards. But after a big bowl of fruit & nuts, there is not much room for anything else. And since eating this way, I have started to feel amazingly satisfied with simply fruit & nuts for breakfast.

So, I think the key is to eat your fruits & vegetables first! That way you will make sure you get them, and they will fill you up so you won't have much room for the other processed, sugary, chemical-laden food you may be used to eating.

Another thing is that in order to get more nutrients from vegetables without consuming so many (which is hard to do), I plan on juicing. So I will have a cup of juice in the morning (I will include some fruits too, such as apples) and then have my breakfast. Can't wait to get a good juicer soon!


***Update 1/3/13:
Although I loved eating my fruit salad for breakfast, it took awhile to chew it all up. And since I have a toddler and an infant, I don't have the luxury of sitting down to eat for a long time, so I would usually take my bowl into the bathroom and have bites in between showering and getting ready for the day. Sometimes I even had to finish eating it in the car on the way to our playgroup or other errand. So when I read about Fruit Porridge in my my book "Raw Food" by Erica Palmcrantz, I realized I needed to try it out.

Porridge didn't exactly sound exciting and delicious when I first read about it. Sounds like that boring stuff the 3 bears ate in the woods. But it's anything but boring. Basically you take a fruit salad (plus nuts/seeds) and blend it up in the food processor to whatever consistency you like. I like to add ground flax seed & sunflower seeds to mine. The fruits can vary from day to day so you have a good variety for your taste buds. The very first one I made was this:

Winter breakfast porridge

1 orange

1 pear

1 banana

1-3 Tbsp ground flaxseeds

1-3 Tbsp sunflower seeds

a sprinkle of craisins

My latest favorite:

Goji Sunshine

(wow, you can almost feel the light and energy of the goji berries radiating from this picture!)

2 oranges

1 banana

1 apple

1/4 cup goji berries (soaked 20 minutes)

1/4 cup sunflower seeds

To sum it up...

Fruit porridge- wow! It's so simple, yet so flavorful & satisfying! Way tastier than plain old oatmeal, and my body feels energized and ready for the day. 

I used to get this feeling in my head after breakfast- when I used to mostly eat cold cereal with milk. My head hurt, not like a headache, it was more of a dull ache and I felt tired and sluggish. I had tried eating different foods to see if it would go away, but I never found anything until I started eating just fruit & nuts/seeds for breakfast. Maybe it was the sugar in the cold cereal, or something in the milk. Whatever it was, it is gone now, and I'm so glad that I can finally start my day feeling great!