Homemade Instant Oatmeal Packets

Instant Oatmeal is very simple to make at home. It takes 5 ingredients and about 20 minutes. 

Cinnamon Raisin Oatmeal

List of Ingredients (for each bag)

1/4 Cup of Quick Oats 

1 Tbsp Ground Quick Oats

1/2 tsp Sugar 

Pinch of salt

1/4 tsp Cinnamon

Handful of Raisins

 With the first four ingredients you can mix and match any dried fruit flavor combo you would like.

I listed ground oats as one of the ingredients above and that is the big trick to getting your homemade version to feel like the store bought kind. I put 1.5 cups of oats in my blender and mix them on low until they look like bread crumbs. 

You can add as much or as little of this mix to your bags as you want. I like 1Tbsp but if you want it to be thinner then go with less. 

20 bags (that is only 1/2 a box of oats)

I know the pictures is not that appealing but most oatmeal does not look all that great so no judging until you try it! I truly think that the homemade stuff tastes better but it is less sweet, if you need to have it sweeter then add a little more sugar or put some honey in it after you warm it up. I make mine with 1/2 a cup of milk.

Now for some stats 

Store bought Instant Oatmeal has around 31 ingredients

Homemade has 5 

The cost per packet for store bought is $0.30 per packet

Assuming you have sugar and salt and do not need to buy them

 homemade costs $0.15 per packet

300 Screws Later....

Spring has been extremely busy around here!

My hubby and I spent every available weekend this spring expanding and moving our square foot garden. As you remember I did quite a few posts last spring about my four raised beds. They did great and I learned a lot, including the fact that I need more growing space. There where a few things that greatly needed to change this year with our raised beds.

Placement
- The beds were not located in the best place for sun. I picked a convenient location for me but not really for the plants. Well that has changed, we moved the garden to the center of our backyard where we have the most sun! Who needs grass?

Construction
- We had great intentions with the first beds but they did not hold up well at all. This time around we made the beds to last. I am going to do a separate post on constructing raised beds. 

Size
- The first garden was a good start but this girl needs more space to grow! So we tripled the size of the garden and made a verity of different sized beds for both planting convenience and aesthetics.

Maintenance
- My hubby had a heck of a time mowing around the first garden and keeping the grass at bay. This time we made a substantial border, cut out the sod from the beginning and put down gravel.

Here are the beds set in place before we cut away the grass.  Let me tell you cutting out the grass and then leveling the beds was one of the hardest jobs we have done at our little homestead. I was sore for days after that step.

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Here is the plot after we cut out the grass. We rented a sod cutter that runs a blade right under the grass and cuts it off at the roots. Then you have to roll up the sections of grass and move them somewhere else. Grass is very very heavy and we had to move A LOT of grass... I had no idea how hard this step would be.

Stay tuned for how we built the beds and how the garden looks now all filled with plants!