How Fast Can You Make Breakfast?
In order to help kids and adults see that having breakfast at home doesn’t take a lot of time, I play game called How Fast Can You Make It? Ingredients for 2 simple breakfasts are laid out on a table in front of the room. Simple breakfast ingredients might be whole grain cereal and skim milk or whole wheat bread, peanut butter and fruit or fruit-only jam. Two members of the audience are recruited to be the “guest-chefs” who race against each other assembling the breakfast assigned to them. I give the start signal and the chefs show the audience that breakfasts can go together in 30 seconds or less. Samples of the whole wheat bread with the peanut butter and fruit/fruit jam are offered to the audience to show them that these ingredients make a tasty sandwich. Other products new to the audience such as fat-free cream cheese, varieties of fruit or almond butter might be introduced using this same game.A variation of this game also works well in introducing the audience to new breakfast recipes. After the guest chef washes his or her hands thoroughly, I give the chef a recipe and the ingredients for a fruit smoothie or a breakfast yogurt dish (vanilla yogurt, raisins, frozen fruit and Grape Nuts) and tell them I am timing them to see how fast they can assemble the smoothie or the yogurt. Both of these dishes go together in under a minute. The audience is then offered tastes of the smoothie or yogurt. These demonstrations allow me to talk about the benefits of eating breakfast and the advantage of eating a low-fat, low-cost breakfast at home as opposed to waiting in line at a fast-food drive-through. I have used this successfully at schools as well as adult audiences.
