Money Free Week Day 4 - Homemade Instant Oatmeal

Day 8 money spent - $30 (My sister's child care for tomorrow fell through so I had to get gas so I can get there to watch my nephew. I'm sad that it broke my money free week a little but not that I will be able to help out family.)
Day 6 Fly Lady - working on my "hot spots"

Homemade Instant Oatmeal....seems a little like an oxymoron but I'm always on the lookout for quick affordable breakfast ideas. I like oatmeal but it takes too long for our normal morning routine and I usually only buy the little "instant" packets for camping trips and the like. Since I'd dehydrated so many apples and wanted to figure out some uses for them other than just snacking, I decided to try and figure out how to make instant flavored oatmeal. The obvious choice for my first adventure was "Apple Cinnamon" (plus it's my favorite).

The Simple Dollar and Budget 101 both had decent directions for making your own instant oatmeal packets so I used their recipes as a starting point to figure out a recipe that works for me. The first thing I wanted to change was the use of zip lock baggies to store the individual servings. All those plastic baggies seemed wasteful and I've been trying to get away from storing food in plastic. Instead I decided to make a mix that could be added to regular quick cooking oatmeal to turn it into instant. Below is the recipe that worked for me.

For the Instant mix

(this is made to please my palate so you might have to change the amounts to please yours)

1/2 C Oat Powder (oatmeal that's been ground in a blender to make powder)

1/2 C Dried apple bits (I used the blender for this too)

1/4 C Sugar

1 tsp Salt

2 tsp Cinnamon

Mix it all together in a jar.

When you are ready to make the oatmeal, add 2 Tbsp mix for every 1/4 C Oatmeal (the apples tend to float to the top so make sure to get the whole mix in every scoop). Then add as much water as makes you happy and enjoy.