Breakfast made simple

I have a confession to make - I don't make breakfast for my family.  We are very much a cold cereal bunch because, well, I like cereal, and it's better for you (if it's not the sugary kind) than a lot of the alternatives.  The problem is, cereal can be expensive (unless you never spend more than $1 a box, but we'll leave that for another discussion) and I have been trying to find ways of incorporating food storage type foods more in our every day diet.

So what do you do when you're trying to use the oats and wheat in your food storage and you don't particularly like getting up at the crack of dawn to prepare breakfast for your family?

Answer:

Prepare breakfast the night before!

I have found the most yummy recipe for crockpot oatmeal at one of my favorite food storage websites:

http://safelygatheredin.blogspot.com

This makes a really big batch of oatmeal, so if you don't need that much you can either refrigerate leftovers and just reheat with some milk later, or you can try a slightly modified, scaled down version that I use.  Personally, I didn't see the point of leaving the crockpot on all night since I have a handy dandy timer that I could program and plug the crockpot into.  Here's my version:

1 1/2 cups steel cut oats (you can't use regular or instant because they cook too fast and you would have cement in the morning)
4 cups water
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup powdered milk (and they'll never know it's in there)
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp honey
1/2 cup dried apricots, chopped

To be added in the morning:
Brown sugar to taste
Toasted, chopped almonds

Put all ingredients into a 3-4 quart crockpot set on Low, and set your timer to be on for 3 hours (mine goes on at 4 am and off at 7 am).  In the morning, stir, and sprinkle with brown sugar and toasted almonds.  YUM!  Serves 5-6.  Oh, and if you want an extra easy clean up, butter the crockpot lightly before adding all the ingredients.  Butter makes it better, right?

If you don't have a timer, add 1/2 to 1 cup of extra water and turn your crockpot on to low at bedtime.

I have tried this with cracked wheat too, although I'm still perfecting that recipe.