Cooking Series: Easy to make recipes on a budget - Breakfast

Today I'll show you a meal to make if your on a tight budget. Basically if your a college student, your poor, you don't have time to cook a banquet. These meals are all done with less than 20 minutes cooking times. The hardest parts of this meal is getting the utensils, ingredients and heat levels just right. We'll start with breakfast soon but first some important points.

So when you hear or see someone talk about high heat, low heat or medium heat most people have different ideas on what that mean. Well heat is extremely important in cooking anything. Too much or too little can ruin a meal. The other extremely important part of cooking is time. When time and heat combine that's when you can have a meal that is either great or goes straight to the garbage. So below are images from my stove that show you what I know are low, medium and high.

Low

Medium

High

There are two things that I recommend you buy. One is a set on measuring tools. I bought these at Bed, Bath and Beyond. Their inexpensive and save me a lot of time when trying to measure portions. The second thing is whats called a sauce pan or sauce pot. It's a pot that is supposed to be used only for sauce. But I find that these are great for someone who is only making food for themselves. Don't mind the pan it's old but later on you'll need one as well.

Breakfast: Oatmeal

So growing up I never cared for Oatmeal. My mom made it with milk which never tasted good to me. Well a while back I gave Oatmeal another chance doing it my own way. The difference being I used water instead of milk and added something crunchy to the meal. But first since this is for those who are not experts at cooking here is some basic info.

When making oatmeal here in the U.S. we have a company called Quaker Oats. They aren't the only oatmeal maker but their brand is the one most recognized as the best oatmeal brand. I bought this large one to save money. I don't recommend you buy the ones with additional flavors like apple cinnamon, brown sugar and others. Stick to the plain version as the other just have added things that aren't really naturally added. That goes for all other brands also.

So put your pot on the stove. Using the measuring cups use the one that says 1 cup (it's the biggest one) pour clean water into it until you reach the top of the cup. Than pour that water into the pot. Next turn the stove on and get it to medium heat. What you want is for the water to start boiling. The water is boiling when you see bubbles in it and steam coming off from it. Now remember there are instructions on the Quaker Oats box so that what we're going by when making this meal for one person. Next after you open the Quaker Oats you'll use the measuring spoon again to pour out half a cup. A little trick that I do to not spill oats on the floor to attract rodents and pest is this. So pour how oats into the cup but have the bowl that you'll use to put your finished product in. You might get some spillage but that's okay because you can add that to the pot. 

After you've measured out half a cup of oats and the water has started boiling pour the oats into the pot. Now here's where reading the instructions doesn't help. The thing you have to do is get a spoon and start stirring the pot. Now here's the thing this whole process should not take more than 10 minutes. So using that as your maximum time watch and stir the pot around once a minute. You'll notice that the water is boiling and the oats are starting to look mushy. As the water disappears I recommend turning down the heat. You might be around the seven minute mark when you lower the heat. But the important thing is make sure that the oats aren't sticking to the bottom of the pot. This will also tell you when the water has evaporated form the pot.

  

 

If you want to have your oatmeal just like that you can do this little thing that I do to add some crunch and flavor to this breakfast. It's some thing that parents do for kids but this is a healthier variation. Usually some parents would take a cookie, crunch it up and put it at the bottom of a bowl than pour the cooked oatmeal on top. Instead I use a Granola bar, in this case a Quaker oats chocolate chip granola bar. So crush the bar and put it at the bottom of the bowl. Now when you've turned off the pot on the oatmeal pour that on top of the granola. Stir that together and serve for breakfast. That's all there is to it. 

   

That's breakfast so next is lunch time. After you try this meal feel free to leave a comment and tell me what you think of the variation with the granola bar. I'm no Gordon Ramsey but I think if you try this meal you'll be able to make this meal without burning down your house. It's a healthy breakfast that you can also have before bed and if your a fitness person I know you no the use of oatmeal as part of a healthy meal plan. If you want more cooking tips from the experts check out the links below. Also look at Gordon Ramsays channel on YouTube there's good stuff on there. Enjoy.

+Food Network
+Cooking Channel
+Bed Bath & Beyond
www.foodnetwork.com
www.food.com
www.cookingchanneltv.com
www.gordonramsay.com
www.bedbathandbeyond.com

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