Morning Cheap Eats: Blueberry Walnut Oatmeal
Good morning! Here at The Billfold, we love cheap and easy recipes. Here’s a cheap and easy breakfast from Steve Lullaney.
• 1/2 cup of oatmeal
• 1 cup of water
• handful of blueberries
• handful of walnuts
• brown sugar to taste
Boil the water with oats in the water. Reduce heat. Stir in blueberries and walnuts. Add brown sugar. This takes NO MORE THAN FIVE MINUTES and is almost free. I get blueberries for free from a friend’s parent’s farm so for me it’s free (blueberries are about $2 at the store). Serves one hearty bowl.
Photo: Shutterstock/topseller
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I used to eat oatmeal for breakfast all the time! But now I am always rushing out the door and won’t eat breakfast if I can’t just grab and go. I found a weird but great recipe for “Overnight Oats” that works perfectly for me: mix 1/2C oats, 1/2C greek or plain yogurt, 1/3C milk (more if your yogurt is really thick), cover, and put in the fridge overnight. In the morning, mix in some jam or chunky peanut butter or what-have-you! It’s best and most sustaining if you mix a tablespoon of chia seeds in with the yogurt and so on, but the peanut butter is a decent protein substitute.
@Saralyn@twitter This sounds great! But I must know, what kind of oats do you use??
@thejacqueline Regular rolled oats – not quick oats! The recipe was very specific about that, probably because they’d get too soggy soaking overnight?
@Saralyn@twitter This sounds like a version of Bircher Muesli, otherwise known as world’s most awesome make-ahead breakfast. For mine, I make a big batch with a couple cups of old-fashioned oats, cover them with apple cider, stir in a 6oz tub of plain/greek yogurt and some lemon juice, add in some nuts/chopped dried fruits/raisins/flax seeds, cinnamon, nutmeg and a grated granny smith apple. Stir it all up, leave in the fridge overnight and taste the breakfast joy the next morning.
I have tried so, so hard to like oatmeal. I know it’s cheap and easy and filling and good for me, but still it makes me want to vomit. Even the smell of it triggers my gag reflex. I did once try and love baked oatmeal (Amish style), which I managed to recreate at home, but that’s not all that cheap or easy or good for me, so.
Toast the walnuts in a dry skillet or under a broiler. It’s 60 seconds more work but 10x more tasty.
Dear Cheap Eats: I demand, DEMAND, that you instruct us single/living alone folks on how to buy, use, and store produce in such a way that we don’t end up throwing half of it away. (I’m looking at you, lettuce.)
the only solution i’ve come up with is to never buy produce. or anything. and to eat out all the time. (or not eat.)