Mother of Invention

It's been said that necessity is the mother of invention. In my case, lately it's been growth spurts that is the mother of invention. These boys are eating almost constantly, despite having full and well-balanced meals three times a day. Yogurt has always been one of my go-to snacks for them during growth spurts. It's healthy, full of protein and calcium, and when I buy it by the single-serving cup, they can get it themselves. For the longest time, I would buy the large quart-size container of yogurt and then mix in jam and granola on an as-needed basis. But that became time consuming and made me not even want to do it.


I've always bought yogurt cups at Trader Joe's because they are the cheapest and least-processed ones I've found. But they are tiny cups, and not a match for my boys' appetite anymore. Especially at $4 for a pack of six cups. Once I got a big pack of Yoplait yogurt once because it was a bigger cup and cheaper than Trader Joe's but didn't realize until I got it home that it had 26 grams of sugar! That's 6.5 teaspoons in one little cup!


So I had the idea to make my own yogurt cups. I got a pack 8 oz. of canning jars at Target. Then I had the kids help me fill them up: 1 tbsp. jam on the bottom, then yogurt (enough to fill the jar 3/4 the way), and 1/4 cup granola on top. We've been having yogurt this way for a few weeks and it's been great. It saves a lot of money, and I'm happy knowing that my kids aren't getting any processed junk.

 Adding blueberry jam (Trader Joe's reduced sugar type) to the bottom...

 ...then comes yogurt...

 ...and finally granola.

I wrote R for raspberry jam and B for blueberry jam on top of the jars. Some people are very picky about the flavor of their yogurt.