The Breakfast Club

LOVE AND BREAKFAST Maro Desjardins loves to cook for her sons, Eli (at left) and Lucas. (Photo: lawellphoto.com)

We have breakfast on our minds. And not just any old breakfast – but real-life, delicious ones that fuel us for an entire day.

The end of summer is slipping into the start of a new school year. For an A-plus beginning, we turned to Buzz parents who handle breakfast like bosses. We want to be in that club: the breakfast club.

Maro Desjardins

Maro Desjardins likes to joke that her teen son Lucas eats a five-course breakfast every morning before he walks out the door to school. And, who can blame him?

The high school sophomore is the lucky beneficiary of a mom who routinely whips up anything from Strawberry Swirl Sweet Rolls, overflowing with bright red berries, to Brown Butter Banana-Walnut Granola with dried strawberries to Sheet Pan Eggs, generously sautéed with scallions, red peppers, spinach, cherry tomatoes and cheese.

Desjardins, who has a food blog, Maro’s Cooking, and Instagram account spends a lot of time thinking about, shopping, preparing, cooking and baking food. 

She grew up with the sights and the sounds, flavors and fragrances of cooking. “The importance of good food has been a part of my life as long as I can remember,” says the athletic and outgoing Desjardins, who lives in River Oaks. “I grew up in Boston in a Greek home where mealtime was the focus of the day for our family. My mother was an incredible self-taught cook and entertainer and has very much inspired me. I used to love to be in the kitchen with her from a young age. I miss her every day.”

Desjardins equates cooking with love, and she has passed on her mother’s love in the kitchen to her own family: husband Mark, daughters Daphne, 23, a recruiter for Baker Botts, Chloe, 21, a senior at Trinity College in Connecticut, and sons Eli, 17, and Lucas, 15, who both attend St. John’s School.

Desjardins is passionate about the importance of school-day breakfasts, and she knows a thing or two about the correlation between breakfast and education; she is married to the headmaster of St. John’s School. “For my kids, breakfast helps to give them the energy to focus in school and wake up,” she says. “I also think it is a nice way for them to transition into their day and gives them a few minutes to mentally tune in as they head to school. It is important that there are some healthy elements. I always incorporate a protein, fruit and carbohydrate and almost always eggs in some form.”

“Eggs take all forms: poached, fried, scrambled or omelette,” Desjardins says. “I serve oatmeal often, yogurt and berries, English muffins, bagels, leftover bread or biscuits, smoothies, homemade granola and juice.” On weekends, Desjardins takes it up a notch and serves pancakes, French toast, frittatas and casseroles.

If her sons are in a rush, Desjardins makes bagel-egg sandwiches or burrito egg paninis wrapped in foil to go. “The boys love breakfast, and to keep up with their busy schedules and sports – both play football – they have to eat a lot.”

John Spalding makes breakfast every morning for Lexie (left) and Jeb. (Photo: lawellphoto.com)

John Spalding

Memorial resident John Spalding’s breakfast game is big. “Having heard ‘breakfast is the most important meal of the day’ for years, I make substantial breakfasts for my two youngest kids,” says Spalding, who is an attorney and single father. “But after some of those breakfasts went uneaten, I have evolved. The reality is other factors influence how much they eat, including being on time to school and their activities and academic schedule for the week.”

Spalding’s two oldest children are Jack, 24, a University of Houston Law Center student, and Meredith, 22, a recent Chapman University graduate, but Lexie, 17, and Jeb, 16, both Memorial High School students, dictate the menus at home. “I try to be a flexible short-order cook when they walk into the kitchen,” the affable Spalding says with a smile.

Spalding cooks anything from poached eggs on toast to pancakes to his mom’s special recipe of old-school biscuits and gravy. “I treasure those times cooking with her,” Spalding says of growing up in Abilene, where his mother routinely won baking contests. “My mom also made homemade cinnamon rolls that are ridiculous. I have friends who still comment 30 years later on how good those were!”

Spalding usually serves up tea and coffee with breakfast. Lexie, a senior, and Jeb, a junior, don’t eat lunch at school until noon, so Spalding wants them to have enough energy from breakfast to make it all the way to lunch.

Spalding says the time they all spend together in the morning is as important as what is served up on their plates. “I am downstairs in the mornings, and at 6:55 a.m. I can hear Lexie’s music as she dances downstairs, and when she sits down I have her tea ready to go. We will just sit down and talk and go over the day for 20 minutes. Jeb joins us a little later, and we all have our little bit of family time. We feel like it’s the best way to start our school days.”

Mary Rebecca Dick loves to cook school-day breakfasts for daughters Catherine (left) and Eleanor. (Photo: lawellphoto.com)

Mary Rebecca Dick

Mary Rebecca Dick is a believer in breakfasts. “I could happily eat breakfast three times a day, and my favorite meal is brunch,” says the lively wife to Cody and mother to Catherine, 8, and Eleanor, 5, who both attend River Oaks Baptist School. “And I find on days that I miss breakfast, I am super cranky. I know that if the girls eat a good breakfast, they will be prepared for the day, have good attention and behave well.”

Her daughters have differing tastes. “Catherine loves eggs, and Eleanor cannot stand them,” says Dick, a West University Place resident who is the mission coordinator for Christ The King Presbyterian Church. “Eleanor loves yogurt and smoothies, and Catherine cannot abide those. Eleanor won’t drink milk, and Catherine has a severe peanut allergy.”

Mom relies heavily on favorite breakfast standards. “I love big breakfasts on the weekends, and I try to double the batch of whatever we are having and then freeze that for the week. This allows me to pop things that I make like waffles, frittatas and banana breads into the toaster on school days, and then we have a quick but solid breakfast. I think school-day breakfasts should take around 10 minutes total. If we do smoothies or eggs, it’s more like 15. The weekend prep helps control some chaos.”

Both parents are former college athletes – Mary Rebecca was on the cross-country team at Rice University, and Cody, a principal with Fayez Sarofim & Co., was on the golf team at Texas Christian University. Proper nutrition is always on their radar. “You need some good fats, fruits, veggies or breads and a protein,” says Mary Rebecca Dick, who adds moderation is key. “We have as many weeks where we all eat cereal as we do ones with homemade granola and green smoothies.”

Christy Smith loves to find breakfast recipes in her cookbook library to make for sons Thomas (left) and Samuel. (Photo: lawellphoto.com)

Christy Smith

Bellaire resident Christy Smith loves cookbooks and cooking. “I really do think that breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” enthuses Smith, a stay-at-home mom and volunteer who is married to Dr. Thomas G. Smith, a urologist at Baylor College of Medicine. “It gives you the energy you need for your day. It is hard to concentrate and learn if you are hungry.”

The Smiths have two sons: Thomas, an eighth grader at Pershing Middle School, and Samuel, a third grader at Horn Elementary. “My older son has the late lunch at Pershing, which alternates between 1 p.m. and 1:30 p.m., so it is important that he eats a substantial breakfast with some protein. I think a combination of carbohydrates with protein and a little fat to keep you full is a great way to start the day.”

Smith has some go-to breakfast recipes. “I love baked oatmeal and also ham and egg cups,” she says. “I also will toast whole-grain bread, spread with either peanut butter or almond butter and topped with sliced bananas and a drizzle of honey. “Other morning staples are breakfast tacos, French toast with whole-grain bread, and open-faced fried egg sandwiches on English muffins, as well as homemade pancakes and waffles. “Smoothies are great and fast, and I will make them two or three times a week.”

If Smith needs inspiration in the kitchen, she turns to her extensive library. “I have around 100 cookbooks. One side of my island is all bookshelf, so I keep them in the kitchen. I really like to read America’s Test Kitchen cookbooks, and they make some of my favorite cookbooks, like The New Best Recipe by Cook’s Illustrated. I have to tell myself in Costco that I cannot even go down the aisle! Even though you can find millions of recipes online, I still prefer a cookbook.”

And she loves cooking. “My grandmother was an amazing cook, and she made everything from scratch. She would sit and watch us eat what she created, and you could see in her face how much she enjoyed watching us eat her food,” says Smith. “I feel the same way now, although I have no time to sit! One of the ways I show love to my family is to cook for them, and it makes me happy.”