imple Vegetarian | Brian versus Big Cereal

For most of the years we've lived together, Brian has had a cutoff price of 10 cents per ounce for breakfast cereal. Any more than that, and he just won't buy it. We set this limit back when we were first married, based on the estimated cost of our main alternative, homemade granola. I worked out that a batch of granola made according to the recipe from The Tightwad Gazette weighed about a pound and cost about $1.60 to make, so we concluded that if the boxed cereals from the store could beat that price, they were a good deal.

Although fees have risen inside the years due to the fact, we've got were given in no way adjusted our benchmark charge, as it made the mathematics so smooth. Unfortunately, what isn't so easy anymore is staying inside this fee restrict. For the beyond six years or so, Brian has relied nearly solely on the raisin bran from Aldi, the only cereal that reliably met his goal rate?And ultimate 12 months, the price of that subsequently rose above the restrict. Since we might joined Costco via that factor, we have been capable of make do for some time via stocking up on Kellogg's Raisin Bran every time Costco took place to have it for $1.Fifty a pound. But the last few instances we have were given long past there, that hasn't been to be had each. We were capable of discover a good deal as quickly as on Life and as quickly as on Honey Bunches of Oats, but neither of these is as wholesome as Brian's regular breakfast?And on our final experience, they were not available at our required price either.

So, at this factor, Brian had 3 alternatives:

1. Accept that prices have gone up and raise his benchmark price;
2. Find something other than cereal to eat for breakfast; or
3. Attempt to come up with a homemade cereal recipe that would be cheaper than the boxed stuff.

Now, the only kind of cold cereal it's reasonably easy to make at home is granola. However, most homemade granola recipes, including the one from The Tightwad Gazette that we based our benchmark on in the first place, are pretty heavily loaded with sugar and oil. Brian has attempted to make a healthier granola before, but even that recipe, though it doesn't taste particularly sweet, still has more sugar in it than he wants to consume every morning at the breakfast table.

This time, but, Brian had a trendy concept. Based on his experiments with using a flaxseed-water mixture as an egg replacement, he idea he is probably capable of use this identical aggregate as a binder to maintain the granola collectively without pretty a few oil or sugary syrup. And this worked...Sort of. The granola did in reality stay together, but it become particularly hard and chewy. Also, the 2 tablespoons of sugar he'd covered in his mini take a look at batch have been now not sufficient to offer it any discernible sweetness, and he changed into reluctant to growth the sugar lots past this thing.

So, after multiple unsuccessful tries at this flaxseed-based recipe, he decided to try a unique tack. He'd use a extra desired granola recipe, however then he'd lessen that with simple oats whilst ingesting it, the way he presently does together with his raisin bran. This manner, the overall quantity of sugar in a unmarried bowlful of cereal may stay the equal, but the sweetness is probably greater concentrated inside the granola chunks as opposed to spread for the duration of the complete bowl, so it might be much less hard to flavor. And this would moreover permit him to ditch the flaxseed combination and go with a greater preferred sugar-oil base.

So he whipped up a small batch like this, and positioned that it became indeed a whole lot tastier than the flaxseed stuff. In reality, it come to be so tasty that he feared he might be tempted to snack on it, that could (a) no longer be very healthful and (b) no longer leave him any for breakfast. I cautioned solving this hassle by using reducing the granola with easy oats straight away, as soon as it became cool, instead of doing it thru the bowl every morning. This could also save him time within the morning. Brian appreciated this idea, for the cause that even if he did snack on the cereal, in this form it might be more healthy than most different matters he might be willing to snack on (collectively together with his current-day favorite indulgence, peanuts with chocolate chips).

After a little more tinkering with the recipe to adjust the sugar and oil as low as viable, Brian came up collectively along with his current version, which I'm calling

BRIAN'S LOW-SUGAR COCONUT GRANOLA, VERSION 3.Zero

Combine in a bowl:

• 4 c. rolled oats
• 1/2 c. chopped walnuts
• 1/4 c. wheat bran
• 1/4 c. flaxseeds
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla
• 1/2 c. honey
• 1/4 c. melted coconut oil

Spread the mixture out in a baking pan and and bake at 350°F for 10 minutes. Take it out, stir it around, then bake another 5 minutes. (Remove promptly, or it will burn.)

Stir in:

• 1 c. raisins
• 5 c. rolled oats

Store in an airtight container. This recipe is both tasty enough and healthy enough to make a reasonable substitute for Brian's usual breakfast mixture of raisin bran, oats, and flaxseeds. The question is, how does it compare price-wise?

According to my calculations, at the costs we currently pay, a whole batch of this includes $1.26 truely worth of oats, $.62 really worth of walnuts, $.20 really worth of flaxseeds, $.Ninety well worth of honey, and $.70 properly really worth of coconut oil. That's $3.Sixty 8, which we will round as much as $3.Seventy 5 to account for the cinnamon, salt, and vanilla. And Brian reckons it's enough for eight bowls, in order that works out to approximately 47 cents in keeping with bowl.

His cutting-edge breakfast is: $zero.39 really worth of raisin bran (at its new, better fee), approximately $0.05 properly really worth of oats, and about $0.03 worth of flaxseeds. (This could not include the charge of his homemade walnut milk, for the reason that he will use an equal amount of that with either breakfast.) So the raisin bran breakfast comes to...47 cents consistent with bowl, exactly the same as the home made granola.

So, price-practical, the two breakfasts are same. It's all a question of which Brian unearths more tiresome: going to Aldi for raisin bran, or baking granola. For now, he is taking part in the home made granola, so he plans to live with it for some time. But if he ever receives bored with making granola each week, he can cross lower lower back to the Aldi raisin bran at its modern price of 11.7 cents in keeping with ounce and no longer enjoy like he is getting ripped off. And, shifting ahead, any time we find out an exciting-searching cereal at Costco for underneath 12 cents in line with ounce, we will go in advance and snap it up, knowing it compares fairly nicely to what we are eating now.