...is that you can make your own homemade instant oatmeal for nearly $8 cheaper than you can buy anyone of their boxes in store...Here's How!
Healthy Benefits: Your oatmeal will have little to no added sugar or sodium, and it can be as low calorie as you want it to be. You can also make it as versatile as you want it to be too. So if you want chocolate flavored oatmeal one morning instead of your everyday Apples & Cinnamon, you can darn well have it, and eat it too! Yes, At last! And all it takes is a blender, some snack bags, and of course, a lot of oatmeal.
Calories: about 75 per Snack Bag
Ingredients:
- 3 cups of 1.5 lb of Oatmeal (in the Bulk Foods Section) - around $1.50/lb
- Store Brand Snack bags - around $3
Equipment: Blender, 2 bowls, set of measuring spoons
Steps:
1. Take 1 cup of the Oatmeal and place it in the blender. Blend it until it looks like a powder.
(This will add to the consistency of your oatmeal and help make it quicker to cook)
2. Put the powdered oatmeal into a small bowl and set it aside
3. Measure 2 cups of the remaining oats and put it into the second bowl.
4. Get out your plastic bags and your measuring spoon and evenly divide the whole oats with the powdered mixture- using this ratio.
Each snack bag needs: 2 1/2 tablespoons of whole oats, and 1 1/2 tablespoons of powdered oats.
5. When you run out of the powdered oats, be sure to put the rest of the whole grain oats back into the container where you got them from. This will help reduce the amount of calories per packet.
After completing these steps, you might have around 11 packets of instant oatmeal. And you can do the recipe again! Since there's 3 more cups left in 1.5 oatmeal.
Savings: In 1.5 of Oatmeal there are at least 7.5 cups of oats, which means you can repeat the recipe twice and reuse the same bags you've already used. This means you will have around 22 bags of instant oatmeal for $5.25 for 22 cents a packet.
Comparison: Compared to buying 2 10-packet boxes of instant oatmeal for an average cost of $2.62. You will save $8, by using this recipe, and get 2 more packets of oatmeal for free.
Flavor Tips: Since there's not a lot of oatmeal for the base, I usually combine a tablespoon of Truvia 0-calorie sweetener with 1 tablespoon of Chocolate PB2 to add some extra protein. Then I add a mountain of fresh fruit to top it all off.
- Chocolate Oatmeal (with Protein): 1 tablespoon of Chocolate PB2, with a dash of salt to taste (if needed)
- Vanilla Extract for Vanilla
- Gingerbread: DIY Homemade Gingerbread Spice Mix
- Crush Peppermint Candies for Mint
- Eggnog (Gingerbread Spice Mix, with Brandy/Rum Extract)