I do not have time to eat breakfast.  Because The Boy needs to be at Kids Club first, we must leave the house by 7am.  I am not an early riser, and never have been, ergo, I do not have time for breakfast.  However.  I need something, and something that will stay with me because I work hard – on my feet, fielding 18 questions a second and putting out little “fires” with speed and agility.  All while trying to teach middle school.  And I don’t eat lunch until 12:30.

I used to buy the Quaker Oatmeal Squares, which were very yummy, but my grocery store just stopped selling them one day.  I knew I needed to stick with some type of oatmeal product, because before these, I had tried the granola bar thing, and it just wasn’t enough.  So I switched to Clif Bars.  I couldn’t stand most of the flavors, and they were almost a dollar a piece!  Yikes.  But this was my alternative, and I stuck with it.  I looked for breakfast cookie recipes on pinterest, but they had all kinds of strange and unnecessary ingredients.  Still stuck.

And then I came across this.  Cold Oatmeal in a jar.  I liked the simplicity of the idea, the fact that you could prepare it the night before in less than 2 minutes, and it was portable!  And you didn’t need all kinds of crazy superfluous ingredients.  And it would be cheap!

I modified the recipe, starting with more oatmeal (1/2C), and adding regular 2% milk and strawberry yogurt until I couldn’t see the oatmeal anymore.  I added freeze-dried blueberries from Trader Joe’s (that became reconstituted in the oatmeal!), half a banana, crushed up nuts – whatever I had on hand.  I did not use any extra sweetener.  And it turned out great!  I get to modify it every day based on what I have on hand, what I feel like, and considering what I did or didn’t like from the previous day’s mixture.  I have used dried cranberries, added a few (OK, quite a few) dashes of the now discontinued cinnamon sprinkles from Pampered Chef, and different types of nuts, crushed to various consistencies.  I have not used chia seeds, although they sound like a healthy and filling addition.

And I didn’t use a ball jar.  I used whatever travel cup I had handy, although the plastic freezer ball jars I have mentioned before work very well.

I didn’t mind that it was cold, although some people might (you could always warm it up).  In fact I actually like it — it has more of a cereal feel to me than hot oatmeal, which is rarely the consistency I like, and it gets cold and gloopy.  THIS I can eat a few bites, put down, do something else and come back and continue eating.  And they ARE cheap and they ARE incredibly easy.  I can put together my breakfast in no time while I’m on the phone with The Man before I go to bed.  And it IS portable.  Some days I eat it during my three-mile commute, other days I eat it during second hour.

What do you eat for breakfast? Does this sound like something you would try?