Homemade oatmeal packets

My kids eat oatmeal for breakfast almost every single day.  When my little one wakes up, the first word out of her mouth is often, "O-meal?"

I buy the oatmeal packets when they go on sale.  They are one dollar per box, or ten cents per packet.  They eat three or four packets per day between the two of them, so we use three boxes per week.  This means that I spend $156 dollars per year to feed my kids breakfast, plus the milk we put on the oatmeal.  This isn't a lot, really, for breakfast for an entire year.  I was pretty sure that I could reduce it significantly, though.  Plus, those packets only go on sale every few months, and what happens if I run out before then?  I don't have the room to store a full year's worth of boxes of oatmeal packets, so then I have to make it on the stove.  Making oatmeal on the stove is cost-effective, but it is a lot less convenient.

During the caselot sales in September, I bought fifty pounds of quick oats.  I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to do with them, but I knew I'd figure something out.  I definitely wasn't prepared for how much room fifty pounds of oats takes up; I used three and a half five-gallon buckets to store them all.

I paid $18 for the oats.

Today, I went to the Honeyville Farms store in Brigham City.  I paid $23.70 for cans of freeze-dried blueberries and strawberries.  I then sat down to make homemade oatmeal packets.

Oatmeal packets:
1 3 pound canister of quick oats
       take two cups of these oats and put them in a blender until they are powder
Add 1 cup of sugar
2 T salt
Add fruit; raisins are cheapest, but other freeze-dried fruit works well.
Shake the container until the oatmeal is mixed.  Add the oat powder and shake again.
Optional add-ins: powdered coffee creamer, powdered milk, cinnamon

To use: boil 1/2 cup of water and add to 1/3 cup oatmeal mix. 


I made about 100 ounces of this in two large oatmeal cylinders, one with strawberry and one with blueberry mix.

Cost: before adding fruit, a canister of this mix costs me under a dollar.  After I added the fruit, the price went up to about three dollars per canister.  Each canister will make approximately 32 servings.  The same amount of oatmeal in packets would cost about twice that amount.


I love this method because it saves money, it leaves out the preservatives and artificial flavoring, it allows me to make exactly as much oatmeal as my girls want to eat, and it means we can choose our flavors.  I've always wished I could buy the blueberries and cream oatmeal all by itself.  This way, I don't have to be the first one to open the box to get my favorite flavor.