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Better, affordable breakfasts One of our favorite whole grain cereals: cream of wheat with brown sugar and milk! Which is cheaper: A bowl of cheerios or a bowl of homemade granola? If you're trying to cut calories or cut your grocery bill, the first option always seems like the better one. But I don't really think it is... and here's why! As a nursing mom, I get hungry all the time. I could eat two big bowls of cheerios and be famished 2 hours later. One bowl of homemade granola will hold me over until lunch time, easily. Regular malt-o-meal/cream of wheat cereal has never been enough to get me through a morning without problems. Whole wheat cream of wheat (or any whole grain hot cereal!) wards off hunger at least twice as long. Whole grains* are so much better for your health -- and you won't be tempted to snack half-way through the morning or afternoon because they're really filling you up! :) One of the main areas we've done this is with breakfasts. Hot cereals are very affordable if bought in bulk. We buy our rolled oats (for oatmeal) in a 50-lb bag. We got our whole wheat cream of wheat in a 25-lb bag. We can have many, many bowls of hot cereal for just pennies! :) *Do be careful of the many things on grocery store shelves marketed as "whole grain". Often, these items contain a little whole grain and a bunch of fillers... like all-purpose flour. If the item you're buying doesn't say "100% whole grain" then it most likely is at least half "other stuff" -- just check the ingredients list! Companies want you to think they are selling you a healthy version because it's labeled "made with whole grains". The "healthy" cereal with only 4 grams of sugar per serving might also have aspartame in it. Reading the ingredient list is more important than reading the claims on the front of the box! :) Visit Crystal's blog for frugal smoothie ideas and more! :)  I don't order online. For the 50# bags of grains, you usually have to ask at a health or bulk foods store. (They don't just set out the bags with the rest of their groceries!) Any bulk food store would be able to get the 50# bags, and it should be cheaper that way! :) Just ask. :) We alternate between oatmeal, oat bran, and whole grain pancakes for about 95% of our breakfasts. We also buy our organic rolled oats and oat bran in bulk. You can cook oatmeal in so many different ways! Baked oatmeal is our favorite and lasts our family of three for about 3 breakfasts. Oatmeal with fruit on top, oatmeal with dried fruit and nuts, etc, etc, etc. Oatbran we eat with honey and cream. If you cook the cereal with milk it will keep you full even longer. Who can beat paying $2 dollars for a week of breakfasts for a whole family? I just have to let you know that you are still one of my favorite blogs! I check everyday and just love your down to earth cooking and living experiences. We are rethinking our lives right now, something we do twice a year, and one of them is our food consumption. I think this idea is wonderful and a great way to save money! I do buy several things in bulk but have never bought oats in bulk. I did find that wonderful site with the oat packets and now your entry about the hot breakfasts is really making me think this one through! I think with winter coming it is something I would like to prepare ahead of time. I really do love preparing ahead, not sure why, kinda weird like that!hehe Thanks so much for all you do for us readers!!! Tammy, We have been using rolled oats (not steel cut) but we're thinking of starting to do our own oats (cracked) for cereal... But we buy pretty much everything in bulk if possible! :) I just bought a 50 lb bag of oats. How do you store yours? Mine came in a brown paper co-op bag but I am thinking I need to store them in a more airtight container. For a 50# bag of rolled oats, since we use them quickly (in cooking, baking, etc.) I just put the oats into air-tight buckets and label them. Mine last quite a while (maybe 8-12 months? I've never had any go bad!) at 70 degrees in the air-tight bucket. We love hot cereal! I add cinnamon to the water before cooking hot cereal so it is mixed throughout. Cinnamon is so healthy for you so we get in our daily dose through our hot cereal. Also we let each person add some xylitol to it when it is in their bowl so they also get in more of the 6.5g of xylitol recommended to have per day. Ruhamah Where do you buy your bulk items like oats and wheat? I have been longing to get a grain mill and try this myself (hubby is a little skeptical-- he's a white bread man) We buy our bulk grains through a food co-op or else from a bulk food store. We had been using usually half whole wheat, half all-purpose flour for things, but having our own grain mill and using the hard white wheat has made it easy to transition things over to 100% whole wheat... at least, everything we've tried so far! :) Joshua likes white bread, too... but even he doesn't mind what we've been making with our fresh flour! :) Just a reminder to those wondering if they can use up a 50# bag of oats......Throwing a handful or so of oats into ground meat when it's browning is a cheap, healthy meat stretcher. My husband has never noticed! Don't forget to soak or ferment or sprout your whole grains. It really makes a big difference in the nutrition and doesn't cost anything. I'll give you some links when I get a chance, but you've probably heard this before :) Probably "old hat" for a lot of folks, but just in case, here are some links: http://www.suegregg.com/about/c.htm http://www.passionatehomemaking.com Our family accidentally did an experiment one time. We had been making our own whole grain sourdoughs since we first married, and almost living off of it sometimes when we couldn't afford a lot of variety in our diet. After our third baby was born I decided I couldn't keep up with baking, too, so we started buying all of our bread -regular %100 whole grain grocery store bread. It was just never the same at all. Instead of our main sustenance it just became "filler". It just doesn't satisfy you in the same way as sourdough. (I've never tried the regular soaking methods or sprouted wheat breads) Maybe if we ate more meat we wouldn't have noticed as much how much we needed the healthier bread, but with our mostly beans and grains diet, we realized we were pretty dependent on our sourdough. After about a year, we couldn't stand it anymore and bought a bread machine and went back to making all our bread. We were craving our old sourdough. So that pretty much convinced me about this stuff :) I'm with you, Tammy. A bowl of cold cereal just can't fill up this nursing mama adequately. However, a nice big bowl of steel cut oats, with honey and milk (sometimes raisins and cinnamon), will usually do the trick. I buy mine in bulk from Azure Standard, a large natural foods coop, that delivers all over the western US. They are organic (though they also have conventional) and are the best deal I've found yet. They have every kind of cereal grain imaginable. We usually buy their organic rolled oats and steel cut oats, as well as sometimes spelt flakes, plus other grains (millet, quinoa, etc.). Stephanie @ Keeper of the Home I've heard (but have yet to try) that you can grind up brown rice in a strong blender and make a gluten-free, whole grain "cream of rice." Also, have you ever tried making oatmeal in the crockpot? With three little ones, it might be easier to have a method of cooking breakfast that does not require attention. Never tried oatmeal in the crock pot. :) I've rarely been happy with the crock pot meals I've tried, aside from a few older ones... :| Oatmeal in the crockpot is very creamy. However, we did not find it filling enough to make again. It is 8 cups of water to 2 cups of oats, which isn't very hearty! Try the baked oatmeal, it's great and you can half mix it the night before. Azure Standard is a great place to buy on line and you don't pay shipping if it is dropped at a "drop point." They have great prices on many items. What is the difference in rolled and steel cut oats. Is one better for you than the other? I am planning on placing an order with Azure Standard in the next few weeks, and this was one of the items I wanted to purchase. Rolled oats are processed more -- steel cut oats are just cut... like cracked wheat. :) Here's an article comparing some of the differences! :) Ditto on what Krista said...have you read Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon? We have recently started eating amaranth as a breakfast cereal (soaked in water and a tbsp of yogurt for 24 hours): delicious. It is creamy like Cream of Wheat and has fun little circles for texture, not unlike quinoa. Highly recommended, as well as frugal to the extreme. Nourishing Traditions goes into detail on this whole process, and why. If you haven't already read this, I think you'd be very interested. It is 100% whole foods as well as a primer on nutrition that says BOO-HISS!! to processed (non)foods in any form. Cooking like this involves a bit of thinking ahead and prep, but it sounds like you do that anyway! Later. have you read Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon? I haven't, but have read about it. :) Hopefully in the future I will have some time to study the topic more -- I seem to be in the middle of researching numerous things right now... all of which takes a lot of time! :) I know what you mean. One thing at a time :) I like soaking/frementing/sprouting because it's a good way to make cheap foods more nutritious, but I am only in the habit of doing it with our bread and beans. I usually forget with our rice and oatmeal, but I'm working on it... :) I love hot cereal :) Even making it with milk, it is cheaper than boxed cereal for me... ~~~~ My family loves all types of hot cereal... I buy it in bulk too... and store it in 5 gallon buckets... My older children use to call multi-grain hot cereal... cracked birdseed... My favorite is cream of whole wheat... it is so yummy:) I didn't discover for years that I'm hypoglycemic because I grew up eating whole grains and filling foods. Now I can't eat cold cereal at all, not even granola :(, nor some hot cereals, like grits, that are too processed. So it's back to oatmeal (I like mine cooked with milk and blueberries), whole-grain muffins, and other not-so-processed foods. ...whole grain cream of wheat. My kids love the regular stuff. Does it go by whole grain "farina" or does it have a different name brand? I don't know! I haven't looked at the regular grocery store, but mine wasjust called "whole wheat cream of wheat" and I bought it in bulk. Post new comment |
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Where do you buy your oatmeal in bulk? I have never seen it in that large of quanity. If you order it online, doesn't shipping really add to the cost?