Tuesday, October 4, 2011

31 Days: Day 4: Breaking Fast

If this is your first visit I welcome you to my little corner of the world!  You might want to start at the introduction of this series.  It explains what 31 Days of Change is, and has links to each day's post as they occur.  Just click on the 31 Days to Slash Your Budget Painlessly button at the top of my sidebar on the right.

Breakfast literally means to break a fast...fasting, meaning a period of not eating. However, your breakfast doesn't need to break the budget!

Cereal is expensive. My kids are cereal eaters. We go through about 4 boxes weekly, and that is when my daughter is away at college. Mostly that's my fault. I am NOT a morning person by any stretch of the imagination. I'm also not much of a breakfast eater. I sip my tea for an hour or so, then have an english muffin mid-morning.


For me to get up and fix a hot breakfast in the morning is pure torture...and dangerous. My brain doesn't really engage until around 10:00 a.m., no matter what time I get up. I can picture myself a towering human flame because I dragged my robe sleeve into the gas stove. Not my idea of painless... Yikes!



Despite the danger, I'm determined to try to cut back on our dependence on expensive, store bought cereal. No, I'm not going to risk being a flaming torch. There are lots of things I can make ahead, when my brain is fully engaged, green light on, all systems go. Waffles come to mind...and muffins, peanut butter and jam on toast, breakfast casserole made the night before and cooked in the microwave the next morning. I think I'm safe with a microwave. And for those more lucid mornings, pancakes on the griddle. You get the idea.

The way I figure it, if I cut out just two boxes of cereal per week at $3.00 per box (my kids might turn me into a flaming torch if I cut all cereal out), I will save $312 per year or $26 per month! That isn't taking into consideration the cost of ingredients I will use to make alternative breakfasts, but I would bet my morning tea (you would have to pry it out of my cold, dead fingers), that I can make breakfasts for no more than a third of the cost of cereal.

Me in the morning

So if homemade breakfast costs me $2.00 to replace $6.00 worth of cereal, I would save $208 per year, or $17.33 per month. Now if you have other great ideas for homemade breakfasts that can be made ahead, I'm all ears. Please don't suggest oatmeal. My husband makes it for himself sometimes, because I cannot stand the smell of it. It literally makes me retch...which could really spoil someone's breakfast dontcha know?


If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow that could save you an average of $53.80 per year. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. See you tomorrow, same time, same place.

My tally so far:
$589/year
$49.08/month


8 comments:

  1. Very interesting post,thanks for sharing!

    Nice day.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've hated oatmeal since birth, but then I was accidentally introduced to steel cut oatmeal with honey and raisins (I nannied for a family of ecofriendly morning people who always made fresh hot breakfast, or in this case prepared and reheated the next morning). Yum! I still refuse to touch the other yucky stuff!

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  3. We have "sunday family brunch" about noon on Sunday's because I am not a morning person either. Anyway, on that day I will make a sometimes triple batch of pancakes or waffles and freeze the leftover that are not eaten. Then during the week my kids can reheat them for breakfasts. I also make my own syrup. My youngest daughter who is 8 really likes bagels and english muffins for breakfast. Sometimes the kids will have yogurt and a cereal bar. You can make up scrambled eggs ahead of time and reheat those also.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I spend WAY too much on cereal!! We are big time cereal eaters and I am not a morning person either. My daughter will do toast sometimes or heat up some waffles or pancakes from the freezer.
    xo

    ReplyDelete
  5. Slow cooker breakfast casserole! There are lots of recopies out there. Also muffins made in big batches.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Make your pancakes in larger batches on weekends and freeze for weekday? We are vegetarians - so I make a large batch of tofu scramble on the weekends and serve all week long.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Make your pancakes in larger batches on weekends and freeze for weekday? We are vegetarians - so I make a large batch of tofu scramble on the weekends and serve all week long.

    ReplyDelete
  8. we have a make ahead french toast casserole:
    Thanksgiving French Toast 350 degrees
    1/2 c. butter 1 1/2 c. brown sugar
    1 tsp cinnamon 8-12 slices white bread
    8-9 eggs 1 1/2 - 2 c milk

    Cover bottom of 9/13 baking dish with melted butter. Combine brown sugar with cinnamon, then mix in with butter in baking dish. Layer slices of bread in dish. Put a second layer of bread directly on top of the first layer. Mix beaten eggs and milk in a bowl, then pour over the top of the layered bread in baking dish. Cover in refrigerator overnight. Uncover next morining and bake 45-60 minutes (closer to 60+ minutes). To serve, remove from disht and turn
    upside down.

    it's not cheap, but being vegan i've cut down the cost dramatically by subbing out eggs. i've found that 4 flax eggs and 5 applesauce eggs do the trick best (1 flax egg = 1T ground flax+3T water, 1 applesauce egg = 3T unsweetened applesauce). if you make your own bread, you've cut it down even more. and if you wanted to be really frugal, you could make your own rice milk.

    ReplyDelete

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