Banana Yogurt Breakfast Plate

My kids are out of school! And I've been on a little food jag. It seems wrong not to tell you about it, even if it is dumb easy (especially if it is dumb easy). But this little "recipe" sat on my shelf for a couple weeks. Yes, I'm ashamed to say, but even though it tastes just as good as a banana split and maybe even better, I just hadn't gotten it posted. And then this weekend when my son and his friend went through our neighborhood and gathered mulberries from all the trees they could find. Mulberries, should you have no idea what they are, are a berry that grows on a tree. They taste like a cross between a cherry and a blackberry to me and are purely delicious. They grow all over the place around here and the trees are actually considered a bit of a pest because they'll sprout up wherever they please and grow like mad. I'm not sure you can find them on the grocery shelf anywhere. And I'm not sure why. Maybe they're too delicate to store/ship/whatever. I didn't even know what they were until we moved to Indiana several years ago. Interestingly, we've tried to get several adult friends to eat them from the tree and they Would Not Touch Them. Well, my kids touch them and eat them until their faces and hands are purple. And so my son and his friend rode their bikes around with a large bowl somehow balanced on their ?laps? or something (my son claims to be the best no hands biker around, but still--how did they transport an enormous bowl of berries on bicycles--it's a gift, I suppose). And then they came home and told me that now I could make mulberry jam.

How could I refuse? They'd been biking around with a bowl of berries on their laps for two hours.

Now, I would love to be sharing a perfect mulberry jam recipe with you today, but after digging out my only package of somewhat expired, low-sugar pectin and making a jam with a weird fruit in it, our jam came out delicious but slightly runny.

We also had a couple bunches of very ripe bananas on our hands and that runny jam and some Greek yogurt just called to me. Over and over again my friends. Because this is delicious. And easy. And kid-friendly. And kind of pretty. And well--rounded. It's got your fruit, protein, calcium, nuts. It could be eaten for breakfast, snack, pre/post workout food, or as a side dish with dinner. Which is how we first ate it several weeks ago when we had it.

It's hard to call this quite a recipe exactly, but when you're on a delicious, wonderful food jag, who cares?

Banana Yogurt Breakfast Plate
adapted from Natural Noshing
Prep time: 2 minutes
Cost: $.70
banana: .15, yogurt: .25, jam: .10, other stuff: .20

1 ripe banana
1 dollop plain Greek yogurt (I like it best thick)
1-2 spoonfuls jam or real maple syrup or this
maybe a squirt of whipped cream if you're feeling evil
nuts or shredded coconut

Cut your banana in half. Plop on the yogurt, then jam, then optional whipped cream. Sprinkle generously with nuts. And eat.