I’m a creature of habit, however much I try to ring the changes and do things differently (though I do also succeed at that from time to time).
And when it comes to breakfast, I’ve been DIYing for more years than I can number. First off, the bread and the jam (of course). Then came the eggs (delicious, though just an occasional breakfast treat). Porridge is a winter standard.
And over the past 10 years or so, the muesli too.
I thought I didn’t like muesli, because I never ever found a ready-made version that wasn’t too sweet for my taste. Then I realised eventually that what I was looking for was so simple, I should just mix it up myself. So I buy a large pack of porridge oats at our local Coop shop, and I buy rye flakes and barley flakes and various seeds (sunflower and linseed are what I like best), and whatever dried fruit I fancy and sometimes nuts too at our local (cooperative) whole food shop, Harvest.
This bag gets reused over and over (by us) – just wash and allow to dry between uses
Then I take it all home, mix it up in a large bowl, decant it to an old glass sweet jar I’ve had since my student days, and there it is – a fortnight’s worth of daily breakfast muesli, ready to go, in less than 5 minutes.
Normally I just eat it cold with milk. Sometimes I have it with plain yoghurt and home grown fresh or stewed fruit (especially nice for a quick comforting evening meal if I don’t feel like cooking). In winter my friend in Denmark cooks this kind of mixture to make a porridge with it, often with added cut up fresh apple.
The one on the left is plain oats, the one on the right is the muesli
Of the several bonuses (beyond it just being a breakfast I really enjoy):
- it’s much (much!) cheaper than buying processed cereals
- I know exactly what’s gone into it, and can vary it at whim (Malcolm doesn’t like dried fruit, so these days I add that separately when I dish up so we can share the base mix)
- there’s no added sugar, salt, or any of the other (weird!) ingredients whose names you’ll see on the back of a pack of processed cereal (just read those packs….)
- packaging is kept to a minimum (the plastic bags from the oats all get reused multiple times in our kitchen for keeping fruit or vegetables in the fridge, freezing bread and other stuff, giving away vegetables)
- I’m supporting businesses I believe in when I buy these ingredients, not a multi-national corporation
- the money I’ve spent mostly stays in my own community, plus the further communities which supply some of the raw ingredients
If you want the detail, well this is most of a 1 kilo pack of oats, plus just over a third of a 500g pack of barley flakes, the same of rye flakes, and the rest is my mum’s approach – you put in till it looks right! Mix well, store and eat. Enjoy!
Downsides? Well I can’t think of any. Let me know if you can.
the magic jug 
My eldest son has recently discovered the Dorset Cereals muesli that I like and we’ve got through a box far too quickly! I like your approach and might try this myself. Thanks for the idea 🙂 x
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My mum used to ration us when we were children – one box of non-cornflakes per week between us, and that was that. Once they were gone, they were gone (though the downside to that was that when I left home and started fending for myself, I made myself ill with practically a whole pack of rice krispies at a go, just because I could. Though I didn’t do that twice, so I must have learnt something…)
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I really must do this. Too much sugar and wheat in shop muesli!!
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Yes, the great thing about this is that you get to choose exactly what you put in and leave out.
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Hi Deborah. I don’t see any downsides either. In our sugar and salt focussed world it’s the best way to start the day! Simone
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Exactly my opinion.
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This is going to sound really silly, but I’ve been operating on the assumption that one had to either cook porridge oats, or alternately, to make a granola by baking it. We’ve been buying a natural-type granola that’s tasty, but way too sweet for our liking, and although I did try making a recipe for DIY granola that I found online, I’d love to be able to get away from the added oils that they all seem to call for. Up to reading this post, muesli — which I’ve just discovered is not the same as granola (I Googled it!) — has somehow slipped beneath my radar, despite boxes of it being right there in front of me on the store shelves! I’m definitely going to give your DIY muesli a whirl – thank you for posting this!
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Yes, it never occurred to me either, until I read a ‘recipe’ for home made muesli. But, obvious really when you think of it!
BTW, when I deliver training for adults (as I do quite a bit in my ‘real’ life), I always say to them that there’s no such thing as a ‘silly question’, just questions to which you don’t yet know the answer, and really what would be the point of any other kind? also that there’s no such thing as ‘common sense’ – if there were, we would presumably all already being doing the same things. Ha!
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