A question from a reader: frugal winter breakfasts?

Breakfast Rice Pudding may look like oatmeal here,
but it's nothing like oatmeal

Kath writes:

"Help! My family H-A-T-E-S oatmeal, and I'm struggling to find something to make for school day breakfasts, that is cheap, healthy, filling, and quick. My husband, two kids and I go through 3 boxes of cereal a week! This is getting expensive. Can you ask your readers for breakfast ideas that are inexpensive, but healthy and quick to make? TIA, Kath"


I do get a bit of email each week. I do my best to answer questions, and help with various things. (I've had a fair amount of email on making yogurt, especially with non-dairy milk -- a lot of people must be trying to make their own soy yogurt!)

Anyway, here's my answer. The rest of you, can you add to Kath's school day breakfast repertoire?

Kath, don't despair, there are many frugal options that don't involve oatmeal. Here's what we're having this week for breakfast -- Breakfast Rice Pudding. If your family likes rice pudding for dessert, they may enjoy this for breakfast, as well.

It has milk, eggs, brown rice, dried fruit (I used prunes this week), nuts (I used toasted, chopped almonds), hardly any sugar (1 tablespoon for the entire recipe), and spices (cinnamon this week, but nutmeg would also be good).

I baked this on Sunday afternoon, and it keeps in the fridge for 3 or 4 days. To serve, spoon a single portion into a microwaveable bowl, microwave for 30 seconds (just until warm), add preserves, pancake syrup and/or milk.

My one daughter, who doesn't eat refined sugar, has hers plain. My other daughter adds milk. I add preserves and soy milk. In all cases, because the eggs, milk, nuts and fruit are baked in, I feel that we're getting a healthy start to the day.

It's not at all like oatmeal, in my opinion. Here's the recipe, if you want to give it a try:

Breakfast Rice Pudding

2 cups cooked brown rice, cooled (I just make extra rice with dinner one night)
2 cups milk
2 eggs
1 to 4 tablespoons sugar (I just use 1 tablespoon)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon, and/or 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup chopped dried fruit
1/3 cup chopped, toasted nuts (almonds are my favorite)

In a medium mixing bowl, mix until thoroughly combined, milk, eggs, sugar, salt, spices and vanilla.

In a 1-qt. greased casserole dish, combine cooked rice, dried fruit and nuts. Pour the milk and egg mixture over the rice, and stir.

Bake in a 300 degree oven for about 1 hour, until thoroughly set.


Any other suggestions for Kath? What's your favorite weekday winter breakfast?

Frugal birthday cakes -- 7-minute frosting, and our own birthday celebration this week

Butter cream frosting is fantastic for piping designs and messages on cakes. But when I'm in a hurry, or short on powdered sugar and butter, 7-minute frosting is my choice.

I practically always have the ingredients for 7-minute frosting -- granulated sugar, egg whites, vanilla, and either corn syrup, cream of tartar, vinegar or lemon juice (these ingredients allow the egg whites to beat up nice and fluffy). Bonus, these ingredients are very economical, too! One batch of 7-minute frosting cost me about 35 cents. The same amount of butter cream frosting would have cost me about $1.75.

Today is my son's birthday, although we celebrated on Saturday. I had baked the layers on Friday and wrapped them in plastic. Then late Saturday afternoon, one of my daughters helped me make the 7-minute frosting, and place the M&Ms (leftovers from Hallowe'en) on top. The whole frosting/decorating took about 15 minutes, which is really pretty fast, for me.

Some years, my cakes look almost professional. Other years, colorful and cheerful are words that best describe my cakes. What matters most, I think, is that the cake tastes delicious, and everyone enjoys the celebration.


One of the gifts

a winter car emergency kit

One of my son's gifts was inspired from comments by Katie @ Life lived intentionally, on an earlier blog post about gifts on a small budget -- the car repair/emergency kit.

With winter on the horizon, a winter car emergency kit seemed appropriate for my son's birthday. The total cost for this "kit" was under $20.

In the basket, I put a bag of kitty litter (for traction when stuck in the snow), a snow and ice scraper, a road-side triangle reflector, a flashlight (with batteries), an emergency rations food bar, and an emergency blanket. I found the basket, flashlight, batteries, kitty litter, and snow/ice scraper at Dollar Tree. Finding so many items for just a dollar each was a great help to my budget.

Anyway, my son put the whole basket in the back of his car right away, and seemed very appreciative of the gift.

For the rest of the celebration, the 5 of us went out for Chinese food, then came home for cake and gifts. It was a fun evening, and I think the birthday guy had a great time!