Most days, my breakfast costs around fifty cents.
One cup homemade Greek yogurt, with honey and almonds: I can get four batches of yogurt, 6 cups to a batch, out of a gallon of milk, $2.96 at Sam's, so that's 12 cents per yogurt. Add a teaspoon of honey and a sprinkle of crushed almonds (both also bought in bulk), let's say 20 cents per yogurt, total. Bonus: the cups are reusable, so no trash.
One piece of homemade bread with Nutella: flour, yeast and salt bought in bulk, which amortizes the cost of a loaf of homemade bread to about a dime. Nutella is around the same price as peanut butter, so maybe 15 cents total there. OK, you could use peanut butter instead. Or butter, or jam, or whatever.
One piece of fruit, bought in bulk: either an apple or a pear, another 20 cents per.
So that brings us to 55 or 60 cents, depending on how much Nutella I use. Plenty of protein, very filling, very healthy.
Another way I could go: a couple of eggs (36 for $3 at Sam's, so 8 cents each) with a toasted slice of homemade bread, for an egg sandwich. I could throw on some cheese, too. Without the cheese, it would be about 20 cents total for the egg sandwich; with cheese, let's say 60 cents.
Either way, I'm far below the cost of fast food breakfast. (Cost of an Egg McMuffin: $1, but then you also have to drive to McDonald's, wait in line, and really, whoever got only one Egg McMuffin? So that, plus coffee, plus hash browns, plus maybe another Egg McMuffin, suddenly you're at $5 plus gas money, plus all the trash that will now sit in a landfill for six hundred years, plus you're already at 900 calories out of 2,000-calorie-a-day suggested total intake, plus you know what? That stuff tastes gross, it's full of chemicals, and it's not like McDonald's needs more of your hard-earned money. They have enough already.)
Homemade breakfasts are portable, filling, healthy, and chemical-free. Also, cheap. When was the last time you bought yogurt for 12 cents a cup? (That yogurt machine paid for itself with the first batch.) And grabbing an apple, a piece of bread, and a cup of yogurt out of the fridge takes less time than pouring a bowl of cereal or waiting in line at Dunkin' Donuts.
I like to have a cup of tea, too. Bought in bulk, that'll push the total cost of breakfast up another 7 cents (for green tea, in bulk), or 15 cents for black tea.
Cost of home-brewed Starbucks coffee: $10 a pound, 5-6 full pots of coffee per pound, 8-10 cups of coffee per pot, that's around 25 cents per cup.
We do a lot of homemade breakfasts, too! This morning, we made french toast from stale bread. We also make our own granola from homemade applesauce using any sale, bruised apples ($0.50/lb at the farmers market!). Toast with peanut butter, banana and honey is also a favorite, although we buy pretty expensive honey. (We basically decided there were a few things we'd rather eat less of, if that allowed us to eat a higher quality version--chocolate, ice cream, honey, butter, etc.)
ReplyDelete