We go through about 1 to 1.5 family size boxes of cereal a day, plus about 1/3 to 1/2 of a gallon of milk. That is $4 to $6.50 for cereal and a little less then $1 to $1.50 for milk ($5-$8 a day). If we eat oatmeal, that is cheaper. We use about a half of carton of oatmeal which is about $1, the same amount of milk and about 50 cents extra for raisins or craisins ($2.50 -$3 a day). But none of us can eat oatmeal everyday. By about day three of oatmeal, I would rather not eat breakfast then have to gag down more slimy oats. I am okay with it three times a week if it isn't consecutive.
My question is, what are cheap and healthy thing that you do for breakfast? My husband was astonished to find out that a dozen eggs and a pound of bacon would cost about the same as a box of cereal. I thought if bought frozen blueberries and made muffins often, also wheat and honey muffins might go over well. Are green smoothies cheaper then cold cereal? What about yogurt? I suspect we could eat bagels, cream cheese and fruit salad every morning and be happy, but is that cheaper and would we need more vitamins? I have often gotten my kids nourished by giving them "vitamin fortified sugar bombs" every morning! ( I have very picky kids. Most of them are very small for their ages. And 3 of my kids would rather starve then eat food they do not like. And they do. My 60 pound 12 year old was skipping breakfast and lunch because she doesn't like the food.) Even with my obnoxious kids, our budget could use some reworking. So please help. What do you do for a cheap and healthy breakfast?
6 comments:
Okay, we're still working on this. We really are. Breakfasts here right now alternate between:
oatmeal or cocowheats (some like one, some like the other)
cold cereal (buy the cheapest in the biggest bag - we tend to have cheerios type or golden puffs type and shredded wheat).
muffins
pancakes could also work if you're making them from scratch (we don't use egg or milk in them, cutting costs).
Green smoothies - we're doing those as one snack per day. Cost-wise it depends on your sources. We're not great at gardening, but if you are then the greens are virtually free. Fruits in our smoothies are whatever I find inexpensively that week. When I find a deal on fruit or greens I stock up and toss some in the freezer because it's just going to be blended up anyway, thawed will be fine. Our general formula for green smoothies at the moment is 1/3 water, 1/3 greens, 1/3 fruit.
Other ideas - grits.
Baking muffins in the evening before bed so they're ready in the morning. Cooking a quadruple batch or more of pancakes one day and freezing, then you just toaster or microwave them.
Good luck! And if I were you I would nip the picky eating in the bud. Yes, my kids each have a few things they would rather not eat, but they are only allowed one item that they absolutely hate and won't touch. Everything else they have to take a bite or a few bites depending upon age. I think a huge problem these days is that people eat for taste/pleasure, not for fuel. All the chemicals and artificial things in foods are addictive, another factor, so when we feed the kids super sweetened things (like cold cereals usually are) everything else is not sweet enough, their taste buds have altered to expect super sweet. Get off sugar as much as possible and good old fruits will taste sweet again.
By the way, we're totally in the middle of food changes ourselves, so this pep talk is as much for me as you! ((HUGS)) It's hard to feed a large family and afford it. We've freed up money for fresh fruits/veggies/whole foods by drastically reducing the meat we eat. Meat and dairy are SO expensive and not really very good for us. Dairy is on my hit list of things to reduce and I can't wait to see the difference in the food budget.
Think about it. A single gallon of milk at $5.00 (or more!) is enough money to buy 5 lbs of apples or 10 lbs of bananas or 5 lbs of lettuces/greens or several containers of oats. (5 lbs of greens is a huge amount because it is leaves, not a solid fruit). Those things will fill our families up so much more than one measly gallon of milk split between the family.
I wonder if it would help to shop at a Costco's for your breakfasts. I like to buy pancake mix there that is mixed with water. Also, buying a large bottle of syrup that would last a while might be cheaper. Now remember I only have a husband to feed; so I am not in this stage anymore; but I just thought I'd offer a couple of thoughts. I have been where you are and it is expensive to feed large families. I loved doing the cold cereal thing; especially when they could get their own.
Blessings and hugs to you!
I'm not sure if you would be interested in this or have the space for it - but maybe making a chicken coop and raising chickens for eggs? 12 chickens, 12 eggs a day? I've considered this but just thinking about every time we go away we would have to figure out who would take care of them - that's the tough part with farm animals. On the flip side, lots of neat learning experiences with chickens - chicken life cycle, hatching eggs, responsibility of taking care of them, feeding, collecting eggs. Might be fun?
I am sorry you had to move away from Aldi with its dirt cheap cereal. :)
Back when I live in places where there was no Aldi, we never ate cereal. We pretty much alternated between oatmeal and eggs and toast for breakfast. The toast was homemade whole wheat bread, so it was cheap and nutritious. And eggs are so incredibly nutritious. Way better than even fortified breakfast cereal, which is nothing more than a nutritionally worthless product with some key nutrients added back in. Definitely better than nothing, but scientists are discovering new key nutrients in food all the time but they're not adding any of these new discoveries to breakfast cereal, even though they've been in the food God created all along.
Anyway, the downside of eggs is that the eggs you get at the store have a very different nutritional composition than the eggs you get from a farm. While they are still more nutritious than breakfast cereal, store eggs are higher in saturated fat and cholesterol (and lower in Omega 3s and other stuff). When my husband was eating a lot of store eggs, he started to look really porky and not feel as well. Bacon and eggs in the morning might be great for your kids, but it might be hard on your husband. I know farm eggs are a lot more expensive and I know you probably can't have chickens where you are, but I would skip the bacon and buy a slightly higher quality egg (doesn't costco sell Eggland's Best? Those are at least a step up.)
But there's a lot you can do with eggs: french toast, "window eggs" where you cut a hole in the bread and fry the egg in the hole, egg burritos (tortilla, scrambled egg, salsa, and a little bit of cheese), omelettes....
Bagels and cream cheese ought to be just as nutritious as breakfast cereal. Whether it's cheaper or not depends on how cheap you can get bagels where you are. They're not cheap here. But that's because we don't have Winco.
Looks like I wrote a book and I'll have to put it in as two separate comments... :)
Okay here's part two:
I will be honest about green smoothies. They may or may not work for you. If you're going for cheap, they probably aren't, depending on the quality of ingredients you use and what you can get in terms of fruit. And some people in my family feel that "just a smoothie" is enough for breakfast, but other people in my family are saying "I'm hungry!" an hour later. If your kids are light, picky eaters they might work great. My kids are not at all picky, but they tend to eat WAY too much. Anyway, I buy frozen fruit at Sam's Club, along with a big tub of organic spinach leaves (cheap at Sam's and SO nutritious) When I blend it really well they can't tell the spinach is in there and I feel good knowing they are getting some really good solid nutrition, especially since the spinach is raw and the cell walls have been broken down by the blender so the nutrients can get out better. But the fruit isn't cheap where I'm at, and since we have dairy issues in our family we use almond milk and since I can't handle sugar we use honey and by the time you add it all up it's $8 or $10 for a full Vitamix pitcher of smoothie. But I guess it wouldn't have to be that expensive if I wasn't trying to avoid sugar and dairy.
I have a nephew who is incredibly picky and basically will only eat ramen noodles and macaroni and cheese almost all the time. The reason I think he is still alive is that he will drink a smoothie in the morning. His dad is a health food nut and he makes him a really nutritious green smoothie every morning. Most of his issues with being picky come from the texture of food and since the smoothie is, well, smooth, and since it's sweet and he can drink it through a straw, down it goes.
You could try homemade granola. It's not hard to make, and only a little bit more expensive than oatmeal, depending on what you put in it. It's a nice change from oatmeal. Another variation of oatmeal we do is raw oatmeal: we mix dry oats in a bowl with some raisins, flax seed, and a little bit of nuts ($$ I know). Then we slice a banana into a bowl and spoon some of the oat mixture over the top. Drizzle some honey on top and pour on milk. The bananas are really the key ingredient and they are the bulk of the meal, and they are cheap. Bananas are incredibly nutritious.
I really understand your dilemma about trying to keep your budget down versus trying to be healthy. It is getting harder and harder to eat healthy on a budget, especially with a large family. Luckily, you live in Utah, where people still have large gardens and fruit trees and often share stuff in the summer that you can freeze for later (I hope you have a deep freeze!) And give Bountiful Baskets a try, if you haven't already. That's been a lifesaver for me. And put your kids on a good multivitamin. :)
Scrambled eggs and orange juice is pretty cheap. Also pancakes from scratch with seasonal fruit. Or throw a handful of blueberries in. Pumpkin muffins are always yummy and pumpkin is pretty inexpensive.
Post a Comment