I haven’t made baked oatmeal in a while – my main fallback recipe has more sugar than I want to have for breakfast. Then I came across this recipe and made it yesterday. It was very frugal (for us) and very yummy!

I make my menu based on the ingredients that I have (versus making a menu plan and then buying the ingredients that I need – it’s a very significant difference). What is frugal for one person won’t necessarily be frugal for another.

Becky at Scratch Pantry, whose recipe I adapted, has chickens and abundant eggs, so her recipe is egg heavy. I made some small adjustments, reducing the eggs and oats, and taking out the brown sugar.

Apple Cinnamon Baked Oatmeal (makes one 9 x 13 pan)

• 5 eggs
• 2 c. milk
• 2 c. applesauce 
• 2 t. cinnamon 
• 1 teaspoon salt 
• 3 c. oatmeal (not rolled oats)
• 2 c. finely chopped apples

Topping

• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup brown sugar

Mix all the ingredients for the oatmeal mixture, and pour into a 9 x 13 pan. (I doubled the recipe to have one for another day.) Top with slices of butter and sprinkle the brown sugar on top. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit/180 degrees Celsius until slightly firm to the touch. I used a toaster oven for this and it took over an hour; in the oven it might have been different.

To make two large 9 x 13 pans of this baked oatmeal cost me under ten shekels. My costs were super low because I: 1) used milk that I got for free, 2) blended up a jar of home canned apples to use for applesauce (made from free apples), 3) have fresh apples that I got free and 4) buy oats in bulk so my cost is around 4 shekels a kilo. If I had to buy all of the milk and apples, my cost would be much higher.

Look at what your costs will be to determine if this will be an affordable breakfast for you! What can you do if the specifics make it pricey for you, but you like the basic idea? I’m big on adapting recipes to meet my needs. Don’t have apples, but you have some other fruit or vegetable? Use that instead! I have recipes for zucchini baked oatmeal, pumpkin baked oatmeal, and others. You can use canned or fresh produce. You can leave out the produce and make a basic recipe that is oats, liquid, eggs and sweetener. If you don’t have milk, use juice, or water.

And of course, this general principle doesn’t apply to just this recipe! I consider recipes a starting point, and that’s something I teach my kids when they learn to cook – that it’s just fine to make substitutions or leave something out if they don’t have it. Sometimes you come up with something even better than the original!

Avivah