Healthy Breakfast made easy

We eat a lot of oatmeal around here. So much in fact, that it alone is reason to belong to either Sam's Club or Costco. We go through at least a 10 pound container a month. How you say? Easy! We eat oatmeal for breakfast every morning and a lot of times the hubby will take a second serving for second breakfast in his lunch. We have found a very tasty recipe for our oatmeal, but we like different versions of it. So I will share our current versions with you.

I have been trying to make meals or at least part of meals ahead to help with lunches, they are my nemesis! (More on this topic soon) So in trying to make certain things ahead of time, breakfast was an area that I found we were coming up short. Since it is refrigerator oatmeal I make 5 days worth at a time. It makes getting ready for bed a little less stressful. I was making it one day at a time and there were simply nights I didn't want to do it, it make me feel like a whiny 2 year old and so I started to do it in advance. Much better!

The first thing I do is gather all of my ingredients together. Like I said hubby and I prefer different versions of this so this is for both of them. The one he likes has Vanilla (home made of course) and syrup (on this it is a matter of picking your poison, do you want sugar or aspartame in your syrup. We chose sugar as the more natural option.) While I prefer a version with some home made jam in it for flavor/sweetness.

Next I set out the containers I will put them into and measure in the oatmeal. We use 2/3 cups oatmeal per serving.

Then we add in the milk the original recipe that I found called for 2/3 cups milk, we like a little more in ours and so I use 3/4 cups. You can use any milk product that you want. We use unsweetened almond milk, but it tastes wonderful with real milk too.

Next we add in our flavors. For the hubby's breakfast I add in about a Tablespoon of the syrup and a splash of vanilla (I won't pretend that I actually measure for this). For mine I add in home made jam (just about any flavor that sounds good when I am making it. This week I used Blueberry) again I don't really measure but it is around 1 to 2 Tablespoons of jam.  I stir it all together, put the lids on and then give them a good shake before putting them in the refrigerator.

Now all we have to do is pull out a serving after our morning workout and enjoy. If you want you can add fresh fruit to the oatmeal when you serve it. Bananas work great on the maple/vanilla oatmeal. I like fresh berries in my oatmeal with the jam. Also if you want it warm instead of cold all you have to do is pop it in the microwave for 30-40 seconds and you are done.

I also make my hubby's second breakfast in advance. Just so I can put it in his lunch and be ready to go. For this I use 1/2 a cup oatmeal and 2 rounded teaspoons of home made brown sugar. Once he gets to work he has a bowl there that he empties it into and then he uses the container that I send the oatmeal in to measure 1 cup of water. Then all he has to do is cook it in the microwave add  natural peanut butter (completely optional but try it... it is wonderful).

I go ahead and make a few of these in advance as well. That way all I have to do is put it in his lunch. Anything that will save time in the morning is good with me.