Cereal Sort of Smackdown

Cheap Eat Challenge: How does a family of 6 eat on $6/day (or, you know, pretty close)? Find out.

For the last 3 months, I've been buying 4-6 boxes of breakfast cereal from Aldi. Four to six boxes equals about 10 mornings, and that's if not everybody eats cereal (I personally cannot stand most cereals, especially of the Aldi variety). The other 20 or so days, I cook something. I don't usually mind. It's been good--very good--for my kids to realize that they can eat something besides cereal for breakfast and live to tell the tale. In fact, if nothing else, I'm glad I've been cooking breakfast (and I will continue to sometimes cook breakfast) just so my kids remember that they can be flexible, that they can try different things, and that they can be gracious and grateful when someone puts forth some effort to make something for them. And if they're not, they can not eat. Which is an option they sometimes choose. They live to tell that tale too. And usually the next time they eat what is given to them.

However, there have been days--those days. I'm pretty sure you know the kind I mean. On those days, it's been hard to drag out of bed and whip up some pancakes so we can keep on our cheapskate track. And I started wondering just how much I was saving through suffering through those days.

In addition to assuming that making breakfast is cheaper, I've also assumed it to be healthier. But I thought I ought to take a look. This list is imperfect and certainly incomplete, and I'm sure it doesn't take every factor into account. The amounts figured below are for what would feed our whole family for 1 morning. It doesn't include sides like milk, unless stated. I've listed them in order of frequency eaten as breakfast in these parts.

Aldi honey nut cereal with milk: $1.75
This is the cheapest whole grain choice at Aldi. It's about 12 oz. of cereal. These have about 2 tsp sugar per serving.

Pancakes with enough syrup to satisfy my crew: $1.35
My crew needs a lot of syrup to satisfy it. I estimated about 1/4 C syrup for the kids per serving, which is a whopping 4 Tbsp (10 tsp) sugar, or the recommended daily amount (per the World Health Organization). My pancakes are 100% whole wheat.

Breakfast Cookies: $1.50 (for 15 double chocolate cookies)
These usually have 1 tsp sugar per serving and are all whole grain. The chocolate ones contains some antioxidants from the cocoa. (Some of the others have vegetables/purees in them and some of the others have peanut butter.)

Muffins: $1.20 (oatmeal)
About 1 tsp sugar per serving and half whole grain. Other muffins we make are also low in sugar and usually 100% whole grain, but adding bananas, pumpkin, or zucchini to the muffins takes the price up quite a bit as well.

Oatmeal with enough brown sugar to appease the minions: $.70
Again, the minions need lots of brown sugar. I don't even want to know how much Kip uses. He pours it on, eats of the top layer, pours more on, eats that off, etc. The kids probably eat 1-2 Tbsp per serving on theirs or 2-5 tsp sugar. The other problem with oatmeal is that not all my kids will eat it. Mark will refuse it outright all the time and Elizabeth is spotty in her willingness to consume something so wholesome looking.

Toast with butter and jam: $.83
About 1 tsp sugar per serving and entirely whole grain. Again, Mark won't eat it and Elizabeth only under dire circumstances. (Are we spoiled? Yes, we are.)

Blender waffles with butter and syrup: $1.75
As much sugar as the pancakes and these are not whole grain the way I make them, although they are a good source of protien and even calcium. However, I don't make them in the mornings. I don't wake up early enough, so for us they remain a dinnertime treat. Considering the amount of sugars we place atop them, they should be relegated to dessert fare, but then I'd have a mutiny on my hands.

Eggs (10) with ketchup (ketchup is a necessary egg accompaniment in this house): $1.20
Again, this is dinner food in my house. Mostly, because I don't like eggs in the morning--they just don't sit well with me first thing in the day, ketchup or no ketchup (I usually eat mine without, for the record). If we did, they would be cheap, high protien, and low sugar. But folks might want some toast to go with.

Below you'll find them listed from most expensive to least:

1. Aldi cereal.
Blender waffles.

2. Breakfast cookies.

3. Pancakes.

4. Eggs.
Oatmeal muffins.

5. Toast with jam.

6. Oatmeal with sugar.

Now, before I go any further, let me say this: Cereal can break your budget. I am using Aldi cereals, which are super cheap compared to most others. You can buy cereals using coupons and save a lot of money in that way, but I've noticed that the cereals most often couponed are high sugar and low or no whole grain, so coupons can be great, but must be used carefully. Furthermore, cereals are often chock full of sketchy ingredients like corn syrup, artificial colors and flavorings and who knows what else. The other problem I have had with cereal is that, for children (and possibly husbands as well), it can be addictive. Your family will start to only want cereal--coupon or no coupon, Aldi or no Aldi. Manners and frugality will be thrown to the wind and you'll all wind up at the WIC office begging for Fruit Loops while the CEO's at Kelloggs snorg pink milk through their noses in triumph. And I don't think anyone wants to see a scene that messy.

However. Some cereal some of the time certainly has its place, even in a cheapskate's budget. It's a place I plan to take advantage of.

Basic Butter Pie Crust

Cheap Eat Challenge: Watch our family of 6 learn to eat on $6/day.


Time for a photo re-do:

And here's the old photo for old time's sake:

Until about 2 years ago, I bought my pie crusts. There were many many reasons for this, one of which is that I didn't have a proper rolling pin. And by proper rolling pin, I mean one that was more than about 4 inches long. Why did I have a skinny, barely moveable, 4-inch rolling pin? Because once upon a time around Christmas, I'd determined to make sugar cookies. I went to the store to buy a rolling pin only to find them completely gone except for a sad little bin of sad miniature rolling pins. I bought one, used it on my cookies (it worked about like using a glass to roll out my cookies would have), and went about my business.

Unfortunately, a couple years ago when I tried to make a pie crust with this thing we are calling a rolling pin, my crust turned out to be approximately 9 feet thick. Yet I couldn't bring myself to buy a different rolling pin--a truly proper one. Because I didn't know what a truly proper one was. Supposedly, they were supposed to be heavy or at least properly weighted somehow. There was too much information about them. And too many rules surrounding them. And of course, those proper rolling pins could be expensive. And for all I knew, I'd buy one and then hate making pies.

Perhaps I would have gone the rest of my life buying generic refrigerated doughs made from suspicious ingredients, trans fats, and salt, except that one day there I walked past a Walmart display that featured a cheap, but appropriately long rolling pin. Throwing rolling pin caution to the wind, I bought the darn thing. And lo and behold it worked just fine. Compared to my skinny little four inch dud, it worked like a Mercedes. I could make pie crusts. I wanted to shout it from the rooftops. And I realized that when you're not using the equivalent of a ballpoint pen to roll out your dough, it's really not so difficult.

If you own even a lame sort of food processor, you can make your dough in about 5 minutes. It saves you money and if you make it with butter as I do, it tastes really good too.

Summer is coming with all its summer fruits. Don't you think those gorgeous fruits deserve a lovely butter crust to soak in. That's not even a question. Of course they do.

Also, a chicken pot pie is coming soon on this blog. And I wanted you to be prepared. So throw your four inch rolling whatever it is in the trash and buy yourself a sort of decent rolling pin instead.

Basic Butter Pie Crust
Makes 2 crusts
prep time: 5 minutes with food processor
Cost: $1.35

Note on using a food processor: For me (besides having a non-4-inch rolling pin) this is what has made making pie crust doable. I hate cutting in butter. Hate hate hate it. With the food processor (or a blender, which I hear also works), no butter cutting in is required. You'll sacrifice (supposedly) a bit of flakiness in your crust, but I still think it beats the heck out of anything you buy at the store. Which I guess is my general philosophy about homemade pie crust--it doesn't have to be cooking show perfect to be really great and so much better than the store bought stuff. And it takes less than 5 minutes. Less. than. five. minutes.

2 1/2 C flour (you can sub in part wheat flour if you wish--start with 1/2 C and see how it works for you)
1 C butter, cold
1 Tbsp sugar (if making a sweet pie; otherwise, omit)
1/4-1/2 C cold water

Process flour, sugar, and butter in food processor or blender until the butter is in pea-sized chunks (my chunks are always a little smaller). (Or cut the butter in with a pastry cutter if you feel the same way about cutting in butter as I do about kneading bread.)

Add water by the tablespoon till the dough comes together. (I just pulse it in the food processor.) Knead the dough a few times if necessary, but try not to handle it too much with your hands because that warms the butter and that means less flakiness (if flakiness matters to you in your crusts).

Divide into 2 balls. If you only need one crust, put the other in a freezer bag in the the freezer.

Sprinkle a generous amount of flour on your work surface and roll out the dough. Try to get it even (even-ish will do just fine). The dough should be about 1/8-1/4 inch thick. Lift it up and transfer to pie plate. (You can fold it and then lift and transfer and unfold, but I find it just easier to lift and flop it into a nearby pan.) Add whatever deliciousness to your pie. Add the other pie crust to the top if that is what you're supposed to do and bake.

Note on rolling dough: The internet (which we all know is always right) says that a nice, easy, neat way to roll out your dough is to roll it between 2 pieces of waxed paper or parchment paper. Then the transfer is easy. Take off one layer of waxed paper and put your crust in the pan. Then take off the other layer and crimp your edges or whatever edge fanciness suits you. I tried this with 2 pieces of wax paper and it just scooted around annoyingly and wouldn't really roll out. I took off one layer and it still scooted around, but I got it to roll and it really did make the transferring way easier (though I'm still not sure I can recommend this tip), but do flour your wax paper.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

A Cold Frame--Easy, Quick, Cheap

Cheap Eat Challenge: Watch as our family of 6 tries to eat on $6/day while consuming more sweets than they should.

A cold frame is, simply put, a place where you can put plants when it is too cold outside. In their nice cozy cold frame, they escape frosts and get nice and warm during the cool spring/autumn days. You can start seedlings in a cold frame or keep plants growing past what would normally be their season. Handy dandy devices, cold frames.

And yet, I'm willing to be most of us, even the gardeners among us, don't have one. Why not? Well, when you think 'cold frame' (should you ever think of such things) you probably think of something that contains lumber, nails, possibly even (the horror) glass; you think of something that must be constructed, preferrably by your husband or another handsome and able bodied male. By the way if you're married, you should not be thinking of asking another handsome and able bodied male. Even if your husband does not know a hammer from a pair of pliers, you'd better ask him at first and then find a nice ugly handyman next. Except that you don't need to find an ugly handyman because it turns out that a simple cold frame does not need to be constructed at all. There is no lumber that needs to be purchased, no hammering that must be endured, no glass that must be broken and replaced with some type of thick plastic, no plans to be looked up on the internet, no incessant trips to Home Depot in order to get the right whatevers because your handsome husband or ugly handyman got the wrong whatevers on the last four runs, and certainly no more passive verbs that need to be contained in this sentence. Aren't you relieved?

But how, you ask. How can such miraculousness be? And is miraculousness indeed a word? (No.)

I was thinking of asking my handsome and able bodied husband to build me a small cold frame when my friend Sally's husband, Ed, told me that this year he was using a clear plastic Tupperware box for a cold frame. I said something intelligent and polite like, "Huh." He explained it to me and I will explain it to you.

Buy yourself a large clear plastic storage box. (Mine was 18 gallon and about $6 from Walmart. You can go bigger if you wish.) Now turn your box upside down, so so the lid's on the bottom. Take off the clear plastic part and put your plants so they're sitting on the upside down lid and then put the plastic part over it all and click it shut. I put about 15 4-inch pots in mine with seeds (and could have easily fit several more).

And then I totally neglected them. Outside it rained; it froze. My seedlings didn't care. They were warm and cozy and moist. They grew.

I should have given you this tip a month ago, but I--well--I wasn't sure it would work for a novice like myself. I should have had more faith in Ed's great advice. Today I took my lettuce outside and I planted it in the actual garden. I'll take my kale to the big garden when we get around to getting the big garden tilled.

And, people, there's still time. Throw some seeds in some little pots, put them in your upside down plastic box. They will grow and in May you can plant them.

The other great thing about this idea is that even if you don't have a big garden or, for that matter, consider yourself a gardener at all, you can use larger pots and put a few seeds for your favorite vegetables or greens in your little cold frame. You can allow them to get an early start, then put them on the patio or wherever for the summer and then put them back in the cold frame in the fall and thereby lengthen the time that they produce for you. They never have to leave their original pot. You only have to do the very minimal gardeny act of putting some seeds in a pot containing dirt and--maybe--watering them occasionally, though it stays pretty moist in that cold frame, so you might even get away with neglecting that.

Try it. It's fun.

A few more tips:

1. Dirt. I bet you can use about any old dirt in your pots if you want to. I use a mixture of compost, top soil, and peat moss (about even amounts of the first two and a bit less peat moss) or you could probably use a potting soil or just top soil or whatever. The plants want to grow and will put forth a good effort, but if you dig up the clay in your driveway, well, they just might not.

2. If you use little starts that are quite light, you will want to weight down your cold frame box or it will blow away. Ed bungee strapped his to the picnic table and I bet some bricks on top would do the trick too. Mine were in pots with enough dirt that they were heavy enough not to blow away.

3. Labels. I used masking tape and permanent marker to mark my pots and, uh, the moisture pretty much erased those words. You might want to use popsicle sticks with permanent marker instead if you don't like the whole mystery garden thing. (What? It's whimsical, right?)

4. If the whole cold frame things sounds like too much, but you have a pot and some dirt and perhaps a hankering to see something grow, throw some sugar snap peas in your pot. Be liberal. As opposed to many plants, peas grow better when they're in stands (when there are a bunch of them in a group). Stick a simple stake in the center of your pot and as the peas grow tall, wind them around the stake so they get a wee bit tangled up in each other and stay put. Pea plants are pretty. And fresh peas and so so good. (Do not buy sweet peas--the kind with the pretty colorful flowers--and eat them; they are toxic; buy sugar snap peas or something intended for eating.) They grow great in the cool weather. You should have peas along about May.