I’m taking Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace course right now and I highly recommend that you do too. Even if you are pretty debt free, it shows you how to budget better and save money in lots of different ways. The run-a-muck is doing a give away for Dave Ramsey products, check out her website and enter!
One good way to save money is to make your own convenience foods from scratch ahead of time. I decided that making my own organic instant oatmeal would be a good place to start because Summit and I eat it almost every day. I get the “super” organic oatmeal that has flax, dried blueberries, soy nuts, etc. you get the picture and it’s super expensive too! SO, I went out and spent too much on all the separate ingredients… I don’t know how Dave Ramsey would feel about THAT, but I think once I get this recipe down, I can do the cost-per-serving and hopefully it’ll still be less than store bought instant oatmeal, even Great Value. Yesterday I went to the bulk section at the natural health foods store and was overwhelmed but felt totally cool shopping there since I usually avoid that section. 
Looking on line has proven to be a mostly futile search for instant oatmeal recipes that had all the extra ingredients so I had to experiment some. I specifically needed instant oatmeal because we are always running late and I didn’t want to dirty up dishes and take the time. So, I basically combined several things I have read online and in Baby Super Foods, like blending some of the grains and tougher to chew ingredients. So, I got out my trusty blender and blended up some slivered almonds. I’d like them slivered, but I thought for Summit to eat them it should be smooth. Then I got some of my steel cut oats because I heard that they have more vitamins and the good stuff. They are pretty hard though, even after I added boiling water and microwaved them later so I put some dry ones in the blender so I’d still have the nutrients, but it’d be a smoother, creamier texture in the end. For the bulk of my instant oatmeal I used organic quick oats, which after doing a little research on I realized that I’ll probably use the rolled oats variety next time, I think it’ll be soft enough. I decided that I wanted dried blueberries because of all the antioxidants they have and flax seeds have been popular for centuries for their health benefits. Agave Nectar is a all natural sweetener that isn’t super processed. I use it on everything now, you can even cook with it! Finally, Rice Bran is being hailed as the new super food. So here is the recipe:
1/4 cup quick oats
1 Tbsp. ground almonds
2 Tbsp. ground steel cut oats
1 Tbsp. pure rice bran
1 tsp. brown flax seeds
1 tsp. dried blueberries (good luck finding unsweetened. cranberries or raisins are also nice)
3/4 cup boiling water add or subtract amount to preference (milk or almond milk are also a good boost, but the oatmeal is already creamy from the blended ingredients)
I boil the water first, then add it to my oatmeal, stir and cover tightly for about 3-5 min. Then I add a swirl or two (ok, honestly sometimes 8) of agave nectar to sweeten it up! Option: cut up some apple bits and add cinnamon for a Apple Cinnamon version!
