I’m not really a morning person. I’m SO not a morning person, my kids will tell you that breakfast, when they were young, was a big challenge! I usually skipped it for myself, or ate something that wasn’t a good idea.
We’ve all been there: Fly out of bed, get ready for work, send the kids off to school, fly out the door… maybe with a cup of coffee or soda in hand. Rush, rush, rush…
Well, stop! Let me tell you how to make a healthy, hearty, cooked breakfast! And do it the night before! This is great for those of us who are in a morning rush, whether for ourselves, or for the whole family.
Cook your breakfast in a thermos! You will need a good, stainless steel thermos. It doesn’t have to be super expensive. The one in the setup below cost me about $13 at Target! But it can’t be a kid’s plastic Superman lunchbox thermos. Sorry, but those plastic ones just won’t retain the heat long enough. The thermos you use will have to retain the temperature for a minimum of 8 hours (over night, or until you are going to eat the breakfast!)
Here’s a general set up.
For starters, you will need to know how much your thermos will hold. Fill it up with tap water to the full level. Leave room to put the top on! Pour the water out of the thermos into a measuring cup.
Mine will hold 1-1/2 cups. The general ratio for breakfast cooking is 1 part food to 3 parts water.
So, divide the amount of water by 4.
Here’s the formula for mine:
1-1/2 cups = 24 tablespoons
24 tablespoons divided by 4 = 6 tablespoons
That’s about 1/3 cup. But tablespoons works fine for me, since I want to mix up a variety of things in mine!
Ingredients
See the recipe below.
Method
Fill the tea kettle with enough water to fill up your thermos twice. Boil the water. Fill the thermos with boiling water and set it aside, so it can heat up while you measure out the porridge ingredients.
Measure out your ingredients into a bowl.
Dump out the water from the thermos, and put in the breakfast mix. I like to use my canning funnel for this, it makes it easier to pour stuff from the bowl into the mouth of the thermos.
Fill with boiling water, leaving enough space to screw on the top.
Screw the top onto the thermos. Give it a few good shakes, and set it on the counter until morning.
That’s it! Easy, breezy!
In the morning, or when you’re ready to eat, you should end up with a porridge that looks like this.
Conclusion
Stanley, Thermos and Aladdin all make thermos products that will work for this. Just make sure it will stay hot as long as you need.
This works great. The main trick is not to put too much cereal into the thermos in comparison to water. If it’s too thick, it’s hard to get out and won’t cook as well.
You can use any combination you like. Regular rolled oats work fine. So does cracked wheat, wheat berries, buckwheat berries, etc.
If you like to have sweet in your breakfast, you can add a little Coconut Syrup, Maple Syrup or Stevia to the mix.
Any dried fruit works, raisins, prunes, figs, apricots, blueberries, cherries, etc. Just be careful with the amount, based on the size of the thermos.
You may notice I cheated a bit above by having 2 tablespoons of raisins, which pushed my total to 7 tablespoons. This worked for me, just the porridge is slightly thicker. If it comes out too thick, just add a little water or milk of your choice when you eat it.
You could eat your breakfast before you leave for work, or take it with you!
Use an individual thermos for each family member, and each person can have their breakfast ready when they get up in the morning.
If you’re going on a car trip, and leaving early in the morning, you could take this with you and have breakfast at a rest stop.
This is also a great camping, hunting and back pack breakfast.
Enjoy!
Note: Breakfast isn’t the only thing you can cook in a thermos! Check out http://www.thermoscooking.com/ for more great ideas!