We’re starting off the cheap easy meals for breakfast or brunch with homemade yogurt and muesli. This truly is a luxurious but healthy and quick recipe. Totally flexible too, add what you like, there’s no need to get precious about breakfast! Not entirely self sufficient, but this is definitely frugal food.
Okay, homemade yogurt is not a quick healthy recipe to consider first thing in the morning. But, make some homemade yogurt on a Sunday evening and it’s ready and waiting on Monday morning (and all week if you don’t eat it all before then). And, one thing you can definitely say about homemade yogurt is that it is healthy and makes cheap easy meals.
Yogurt is a very frugal food, particularly as you can use long-life milk bought in bulk when it is on offer. UHT or ‘long-life’ milk makes perfect thick creamy yogurt.
There is no work involved for you, except warming some milk, which isn’t too taxing! The yogurt makes itself while you sleep!
The full recipe for homemade yogurt has already been given on this site. But, just to make things even simpler for you I do have one more suggestion to make the original homemade yogurt recipe even easier:
To keep the milk at just the right temperature place it in a cooler box along with a freshly filled hot-water bottle. Now you don’t need to worry about drafts or finding the perfect warm spot in your home. Kept in a cooler box the milk will stay toasty until its ready to eat.
Muesli can be bought or made in an infinite variety of ways. If I was just eating muesli with milk perhaps I would go for something full of variety (and expense). But, the beauty of eating muesli with fantastically tasty homemade yogurt is that you can thoroughly enjoy really basic and frugal muesli.
Either buy the cheapest, most spartan muesli available or make your own. I will confess I do not always make my own homemade muesli, I often make do with a really cheap bought version. Because you’re eating it with fresh, thick and creamy yogurt it really doesn’t have to be anything fancy.
Ingredients for Homemade Muesli
- 250g (8oz) barley flakes
- 250g (8oz) rye flakes
- 250g (8oz) whole oat flakes
- 250g (8oz) whole wheat flakes
- 250g (8oz) dry roasted almonds
- 500g (11b) sultanas
- 250g (8oz) chopped dried figs
Although this is the recipe I aim for, often not all the grains are readily available here, in which case I make do with the grains I can get hold of economically.
The thing about muesli is that it is a dish without boundaries. You can put whatever you like in it, so long as it is dry. We use almonds because we grow them, but roasted peanuts or hazelnuts might be more usual and more frugal in your area.
Similarly I use figs because we grow and dry our own, but when the apple trees get a little older I hope to be able to add dried apple rings too. Any dried fruit is good so long as you enjoy it!
If you like your muesli sweeter add more dried fruit, or some sugar. Or, like me you can just drizzle a little honey on your breakfast to make your cheap easy meal feel a little more extravagant.
For a more self sufficient future