Healthy banana pancakes

As we established in my last post, healthy cooking has been a rare occurrence in my house over the past 6 months. I thought about it a lot though. I thought, how nice would it be to have protein balls to snack on – while elbow deep in a bag of Niknaks. Getting back to health has been quite a journey; one that I’m only halfway through. I’ll post about that soon.

So on the few occasions I made something, the recipe had to have certain characteristics to fit into my baby-laden life. I like to call these my PFFF recipes – Parent-Friendly, Fast and Furious.

• Parent-Friendly – you must be able to make it with one hand, because one hand is all you have with a newborn. To date my most impressive achievement in this regard is holding the baby, talking on my mobile and buttering a piece of toast, all at the same time. We’ll just ignore the fact that I buttered the baby a bit in the process.
• Fast – prep time has a 3 minute window, because that’s about the longest stretch between screaming fits.
• Furious – this can be interpreted in a number of ways. Furiously cooking to get it done quickly. Furiously cooking as a form of intense therapy, so you don’t drop kick your shrieking baby over the couch. Furious, angry meltdown that you can’t even make a bloody meal without 57 interruptions. If you channel that fury into your cooking it’s quite restorative.

Blender pancakes tick all the boxes. No need to chop ingredients (Parent-Friendly), just chuck everything into a blender (Fast) and flip those pancakes like your life depends on it (Furious). Voila, a healthy brunch! And if your baby is over 4 months, she can even taste the batter.

Banana & Oat Blender Pancakes

Put the following in your blender:

• ½ cup oats
• 1 tbsp chia seeds
• 1 banana
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• Milk of choice

Blend til smooth – add more milk slowly til you get to flapjack consistency. Fry in a pan with a touch of coconut oil on low heat til bubbling, then flip.

Optional: Top with cooked apple, yoghurt and honey.