Making school mornings easier

In the post the other day, I got a nice package from Warburtons, enough to raise a smile on a grey February day.

A nice set of breakfast products. The purpose was to raise the profile of a new handbook that they are putting together with tips for making the morning rush easier. This comes alongside new findings tha show that mothers have to juggle twice as many tasks in the morning as executives in their first hour of work and that 27 % of mothers find mornings more stressful than parents' evening or a visit from the in-laws. In my case, I'd say so but that's because neither of those things particularly bother me. Mornings in our house aren't too bad; they've definitely got better as the children have got older. And yes, I get help - husband takes the children to school about half of the time. 

They've asked me if I could share my tips for making the mornings before school easier. Here are mine. 

1. Work out a comfortable leaving time and try to stick to it. This should be at least five minutes earlier than your "Oh my God we really have to leave" time, if not ten. Knowing that time in your head will help focus your mind, and that of older children. Set an alarm to go off just ahead, so that everyone knows it's time to get ready. 

2. Get as much done the night before as possible. Really, I cannot stress this enough as it helps to keep the to do list down in the morning. Here's what we do:

• On Sunday night, I make sure that the children have uniform out and every night, they put what they are wearing, including underwear, on a chair in their room. (And I check it!) 
• After Sunday bedtime, I get out toast money for both. Actually, I do this every day (well, most) for Monkey as he buys his - I just have to send it in weekly for Missy Woo. 
• Any money that needs to go to school is by the door, partly because I don't take them every day. The children have school lunches so I make sure I send in money in bigger chunks so I don't have to do it every week. 
• If you have packed lunches, get as much ready beforehand - get all the things that don't need to be kept in the refrigerator in their lunchboxes, make their sandwiches and place in a freezer bag and put in the fridge next to anything else that has to be kept cold so you can just grab and pop into the lunchboxes in the morning. 
• Keep a list of things they need for school on different days so you can check what they need.
• Place bags and other equipment needed for school by the door. If it's cold, check that hats, gloves and scarfs are with their coats. If it's not, caps and suncream. 
• If you are going straight to work, choose your outfit the night before too. (I pack my gym bag ready for gym days!)
• Check the children's bags for notes from school before they go to bed in case they are asking for extra things to be sent in. 
• And of course, make sure homework is done in the evening.

3. Limit screen time in the morning. The TV or game console goes off the second it slows them down. We have banned it but that tends to improve things. Definitely do not let them watch and eat - try and get them to eat at a table away from a television. In reality, mine only watch telly once they are dressed and have come out of their rooms and before they have breakfast. I can live with that.

4. Keep things to hand. The children have a set of toothbrushes and toothpaste in the downstairs toilet so they don't disappear upstairs for minutes on end, plus we can keep an eye on how long they are brushing for.

5. If you are struggling to get the children to co-operate, set up a reward chart for the tasks they need to do in the morning. The more co-operative they are, the faster they earn treats.

6. Don't fight food battles in the morning. Research some years ago shows that the most important thing for performance in school is that children eat breakfast; any breakfast. If your child wants something that you perceive as unhealthy and won't eat anything else, let them have it (provided it's easy to prepare!). Hell, we've had cake for breakfast on the odd occasion before now! So shoot me.

What are your tips for easier mornings?

Do you get enough fibre in your diet?

Being around in the 1980s as I was, I remember the F-plan diet that was all the rage when I was a teenager. It extolled the virtues of adding more fibre to your diet and used it as part of a healthy eating plan that would help to keep you full for longer and therefore consume less calories.

I can't remember if I started eating wholemeal bread as a result of that book but I definitely didn't follow the diet. However, I did start to eat wholemeal bread in the eighties and discovered I liked it. In fact, I preferred it to white bread and still do by and large. We also eat beans and pulses fairly regularly, along with wholemeal pasta and brown rice.

This places us in a very small group of people because apparently, 90% of women don't regularly eat their GDA of fibre. I bet most of you don't even know what it is. It's 24g of fibre a day, which doesn't sound a lot, does it? We need fibre in our diets to promote a healthy digestive system and soluble fibre helps to keep your cholesterol levels down. And yes, it does help you to feel less hungry.

Recently, Warburtons asked me to take part in a three day analysis of our diets to see if we really do get enough fibre in our diet. Eek! I recorded a food diary for myself and Missy Woo for those three days and it was sent off to nutritionist Fiona Hunter to analyse. Her verdict was that we were both bang on target (The GDA for children aged 5 to 10 years is 15g by the way) and that my diet was a good balance of soluble fibre - in peas and oats - and insoluble fibre, mainly found in bread. That puts me in the 10% of women that does eat enough fibre. Nice to know that we are eating a fairly healthy diet in that respect - although I don't think we hit our target every single day but most of the time, which is good enough for me. I think we just got lucky that week.

Spicy bean burgers if you make them right!

Warburtons sent me out some products that help to boost the fibre in your diet, including Half and Half Toastie which the children like. They happily eat wholemeal but they like to eat white bread too - in fact, they stayed at their grandparents once and managed to convince them that they only ate white bread, so poor old Granddad had to go to the shop to buy some! Little monkeys. So a half and half bread - which looks white but has more fibre in it - is a good compromise. My favourite was the seeded batch but then I love seeds on my bread anyway.

They also sent me some fibre rich recipes, including one for spicy bean burgers which I royally messed up - I think I over-processed the beans and they went all gloopy. As I said though, I make dishes containing beans and pulses quite regularly - try this chilli, this soup or this dish from my own archives to help you boost your fibre intake without feeling like you're chewing on cardboard.

If you want to increase the fibre in your diet, Warburtons passed on some tips from Dr Hilary Jones about how to do it.

• increase fibre slowly, adding no more than 5g per day until you reach your GDA. Personally, I'd increase it by 5g for a few days, then increase it again if you need to. 
• drink more water as you increase your fibre intake. (Psst.. this helps prevent you getting "blocked" up!)
• eat whole fruit and vegetable, as the skin contains fibre - like potato skins, apple peel etc. It's also better to eat whole fruits than juices or smoothies.
• aim for 3 portions each day, so spread your fibre intake over three meals. How about healthy snacks like fruit, oatcakes, or some wholemeal toast? Eating wholemeal bread, pasta or rice would all increase your fibre intake without having to change your diet radically.

So, my question to you is - do you eat enough fibre and is eating enough of it a priority? Do you know how much you eat a day and does it meet the guideline amounts? Leave a comment below - and feel free to ask questions.

(Warburtons sent me a £20 voucher to try out some of their recipes and a selection of bread with higher fibre content. They also arranged for our food diary to be analysed by Fiona Hunter free of charge)

A happy breakfast and lunch wrapped up

Every year, when it's the children's birthdays, we allow the birthday boy or girl to choose what they want for a special breakfast, especially now that the children are at school. We've had some interesting responses which have been quite sweet, like their usual stuff, but then we ask them to pick something special and it's normally something chocolatey or has some chocolate in it somewhere. Of course!

For Monkey's birthday this Friday, he has requested toast and chocolate spread. It made me smile because Warburtons had just sent me some products to try. Along with those, they also sent through details of a survey they commissioned that found that eating bakery products for breakfast made you happier than eating cereals (and even bacon butties). Top of the list for happiness was brioche, closely followed by white toast and crumpets, and in celebration of this, they sent us chocolate chip brioche to try. I'd normally insert a picture here but honestly, it didn't last long enough. Oops. 

Something else they sent was a pack of their Squareish Wraps so we could try out one of their recipes. These are thicker than normal wraps, so you can not only roll them, but also top them or fold them. Actually, I do have to say that I don't find them as good for rolling as usual wraps because of the thickness. Also, I like the way you fold in the edge to keep the filling in - you can't do that with these so the filling just falls out of the ends. 

We did however try them out as pizza bases and made two pizzas for lunch one day. With thanks to Warburton, here is the official recipe.

Chicken & peppers or Cheese, tomato and Rocket Pizza

Serves 2

Ingredients
· 2 Warburtons Square-ish Wraps
· Tomato puree
· Cooked torn chicken
· Char grilled Aubergines, Red and Yellow peppers
· Cherry Tomatoes
· Mozzarella Cheese
· Mixed Herbs
· Rocket Leaves

Method 

1. Spread a thin layer of tomato puree on both wraps.

2. Top one with chicken and vegetables and the other with cheese, tomato and herbs.

3. Cook in a hot oven (200C/400F/Gas 6)

4. Garnish with Rocket leaves.

Now, we took a few liberties with this. We had chicken and a jar of piquillo peppers, which I sliced, but not cherry tomatoes or mozzarella. The rest are not huge fans of rocket so I didn't buy any of that. Monkey helped me "cook" and we just put everything we had on both wraps. I grated cheddar instead of using mozzarella. Monkey enjoyed sprinkling on the cheese, although he did decide at one stage just to dump a load of cheese on the baking sheet "because it was funny". 

I thought that the pizza would come out too flimsy but although they did come thin, cooking made them firmer. I cooked them in the oven for about 15 minutes - I noticed the time is not mentioned in the recipe so I just made sure the cheese was melted. It was very tasty - and quite light for a lunch; a thick pizza would have been way too stodgy for lunchtime. I always want to sleep the afternoon if I have pizza for lunch but this was nice. I am not sure that I would have liked the pizza without cheese - it just doesn't seem right to me.

And there you have it - lunch all wrapped up. (Stop groaning at the back there).

(Warburton's sent me some bakery products to try. I have not received any further compensation. I have not been told what to write. I was sent some recipes to try and include but not obliged to include them on my blog.)