Um--I've never made anything like this (I'm not usually a cereal fan), but a quick Google produced this--maybe it will help.

HOMEMADE COLD CEREAL
Makes about 10 cups

6 cups ground wheat
3 cups milk (raw is best)
1 cup water
1/4 whey, buttermilk or yogurt
2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 cup butter, melted (not in the microwave!)
1/2 cup honey
1 tsp salt
1 TBLS pure vanilla
1 TBLS cinnamon

Mix flour, milk, water and whey/yogurt in a large bowl. Cover and let sit overnight. (If you are not using raw milk you don't need to leave it overnight or use any whey/yogurt. Processed milk will rot whereas raw milk will culture. The culturing milk and whey will make the nutrients in the flour more friendly and absorbable. See my posts about raw milk and soaking grains if you need to learn more about this.) In the morning or in the afternoon, when ever you have time, add the rest of the ingredients. Mix until you have a pourable batter. I usually have to add a cup and a half of water to this or it's too thick.

Preheat the oven to 350 and butter two 9x13 inch cake pans. Pour the batter equally into the two pans. Bake for about 35-40 minutes. Don't let it burn! When it's done a toothpick will come out clean from the center and it will feel springy to the touch. Let it cool. Get out two cookie trays and your blender. With a big spoon scoop out your cake-like cereal and process it in your blender in small batches until it's crumbly. Pour the crumbs onto the cookie trays. (This is the most time consuming part.) Turn your oven down to 200 or 250 degrees and put the trays in. You are going to keep them in the oven until the crumbs dry out completely. I do mine at 250 and it takes about 2 hours. Check it and stir it and taste it often so you will know when it's done. write down how long it took so you'll know next time!

When it's out, let it cool and then transfer it into some kind of sealable container. When you are ready to eat it add raisins to it and pour some (raw!) milk over it. It is so good and so worth the effort!

(From "Happy in the Kitchen" blog)

Muesli was developed by the Swiss around 1900, but isn't baked and broken into small pieces.

The link below is for a recipe developed in the 20th Century - a homemade version for Grape Nuts and sounds more like what you are thinking of.

Cold cereals did not develop until the second half of the nineteenth century (you don't say which century your are referencing).

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: Homemade Grapenuts

Grainlady - thanks for the link on grapenuts - sounds interesting, will give it a try.

In an effort to find an alternative to high cost breakfast cereals, I recently purchased a double box of Quaker Oats - which our local budget store had. I like granola and use oats in breads, etc., so had no doubt that it would be put to good use.

Granola, of course, was one, but I also decided to just toast the oats - adding a 1/4 cup of oil with brown sugar to taste, but the important part was to toast them on a slow oven for about 3 to 4 hours. Then stored for future use (breads, toppings, etc.)

I also purchased a very large bag of rice, only to find out that my family wasn't to keen for stir fry-type dishes. (this was last spring when I tossed out a bumper crop of bok choy that I grew).

The other day I found a recipe for rice pudding - made with coconut milk. Thinking it would be a good variation to try to find a use for the left over rice. No way.

Sooo - I tried adding the rice pudding with raisins to some of the dried oats, a bit of water to moisten, and heated in the microwave. With the addition of a bit of butter, touch of salt, it made the best long-time cooked, creamy, oatmeal tasting breakfast that I have had recently.

Always looking for ways to cut cost these days, so buy things in bulk whenever I can. This - in turn - prompts the need to use those things - to prevent waste. It brings out a lot of creativeness - don't you think?

Just my 2 c's.

Bejay

Bejay-

Cereal doesn't have to look like cereal - at least at our house. "Cereal", whole grains and flakes are incorporated into all kinds of things. Since you have oatmeal, try oatmeal muffins and oatmeal pancakes. I've added a link for Cooked Oatmeal Scones made with leftover cooked oatmeal.

Other recipes using COOKED oatmeal....

Leftover Oatmeal Muffins
1 1/2 c. flour
1/2 c. brown sugar
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
1/3 c. milk
1/4 c. oil
1 egg
1/2 c. leftover cooked cereal( such as Oatmeal, Malt-O-Meal, Cream of Rice, etc.)
Combine and divide into 12-muffin cups. Bake in 350 degree oven 20 minutes.

FRUIT AND RICE PORRIDGE
(serves 4)
2 c. cooked brown rice
2 c. apple juice
1/2 c. dried apricots (or fruit of choice), chopped

Place rice, juice, and apricots in a saucepan and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer about 10-minutes, until juice is absorbed. Serve hot with milk.

My mother told me that in the 30's they used to crumble saltines and eat them with milk for breakfast. I grew up in a home with 6 kids, so occasionally we ran out of cereal. I loved saltines and milk, but I'm a salt-lover!

I add salt to grits instead of sugar, but I also cook them in broth with garlic and herbs and then bake them with egg, sausage, and cheese, but the sausage is optional.

That sounds really good, Lars. How do you do the egg addition? Your opening caught my eye. Aren’t grits generally prepared savory? I do my oatmeal savory as well, and I believe that would be less common.

Johanna - I can’t figure out if milk and saltines sounds good or not. I’ll try to remember this the next time I have an open sleeve of saltines.

I do miss Grainlady.

Here's how I make grits (which I have in the oven right now)

2 cups of chicken broth (or water with soup base added in place of salt)
2 tsp soup base or 3/4 tsp salt
1/2 to 1 chopped red bell pepper
2 stalks celery, finely chopped (for texture/crunch - can be omitted)
2 cloves minced garlic
1 tsp favorite hot sauce (I use chocolate Habanero sauce that I make myself) or
1/2 to 1 minced Habanero chili
2 Tbsp butter
Herbs to taste: sage, oregano, basil, thyme (about 1/2 tsp each, more of sage)
3/4 cup quick (not instant) grits
2 cooked and chopped Italian sausages
1 cup grated cheese (about 6 oz.) Cheddar, Gouda, Jarlsberg, etc.
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 eggs beaten with 2 Tbsp water

Add the first ingredients up to but not including the grits and bring to a boil. I sometimes add the grits too - I really don't think it matters. If you boil the water first, you have to stir the grits in fairly quickly to avoid lumps, but the celery and bell pepper help prevent lumps also.

Simmer covered for six minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and add the sausage and cheese, stirring in to cool the mixture. If the sausage and cheese are cold enough, they will cool down the mixture enough to add the eggs.

Pour the mixture (with the added eggs) into a casserole dish (I use a square Corningware with lid) and bake at 360° for 35 minutes. Remove and add grated cheese on top and then return to the oven for an additional 10 minutes, or until completely set.

Thanks Lars, sounds really good! Enjoy!

Lars, that sounds good. I might need to give it a try!

I did not grow up eating grits. The first time I ever had them was in the college cafeteria. BLECH! I still don’t eat them often, but when I do, here is how I prepare them

My sister and I make them using the same recipe. We serve the dish for breakfast, brunch, and as a starch with beef. Last week, I found some in the freezer and used them for shrimp and grits.

I too wish Grainlady would come back! She taught me much, but I remember distinctly the first thing she taught me...why my cooked muffins always had a gooey top. It is part of the process of becoming stale. It had a very long, scientific name that I cannot remember now.

Retrogradation of amylopectin?

That might be it! I know it started with amyl...... but I think it was just one word.

Nah that was it. I’m not always lucky on my searches here but this one worked!

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/2425499/muffin-storage-to-prevent-stickiness#n=11

When my late FIL was doing his National Service in the British Army, they had porridge every morning for breakfast. One morning it would be served salted, the next morning sugared, so only half the diners were happy on any given morning :-)

We were poor when I was growing up in the 60's my parents had a lot of mouths to feed and only my dad with a paycheck. We frequently ate popcorn with milk for breakfast. It wasn't so bad...

I think the saltines with milk were actually Uneeda Biscuits....sort of like a fat water cracker. My great grandmother ate them with milk....but when she couldn't get them anymore, she ate saltines.
I grew up eating graham crackers broken up with milk....loved them....still do!!

@foodonastump, you’re brilliant! I can’t believe you found an 11 year old thread. Because of that thread, I now freeze the extra muffins sometime within the day that they are cooked. I’m still using the Blueberry Muffin recipe from Dogwood Delights, too.

Does anyone know what happened to Grainlady?

She got her feelings hurt and left. It was a post about saving money. Some were making jokes about what she was doing.

Oh, that’s so sad. I don’t understand why people can’t just scroll on by if they don’t agree.

She was talking about how she helped seniors save money on frozen vegetables when every single penny counts. She told them to buy the biggest bag of mixed vegetables and then separate each one into a different bag, still frozen. They would be cheaper than buying the individual bags, but you would still have different tastes.

Granted, I am not at that point, but if I keep having trouble finding the vegetables I want, I may have to, never mind about saving money.

From Grainlady in 2016

"I teach cooking/nutrition classes at the Food Bank (and other venues), and one tip I give people of limited means, and the elderly on fixed incomes, is to purchase the largest bag of frozen mixed vegetables they can afford. Leave a portion mixed (for adding to soup, shepherd's pie, casseroles...) and then separate the rest so they will now have separate containers of corn, green beans, peas, broccoli, etc., depending on what combination they purchased. This will give them the biggest variety and is a huge money saver.

The biggest problem with frozen vegetables, whether they are commercially prepared or from your garden, there are no enzymes left due to processing. We still need foods in our diet that provide enzymes (http://www.getting-started-with-healthy-eating.com/enzymes-in-food.html).

Another favorite frozen vegetable I keep in the freezer are petit whole green beans (Aldi); and I like to keep some frozen chopped onion or onion/pepper combination on hand (a quick pizza topping). I typically use more fresh chives in cooking than I do onions, so freezing onion keep them readily available.

When fresh from the garden aren't available, I prefer freeze-dried to frozen, since they are as close to fresh-picked as a commercial product can get, plus they maintain their enzymes through processing.

For the "fresh only" crowd. Unless you grow and harvest it yourself, there's no such thing as "fresh" produce in the store. This is why I grow sprouts, micro-greens, and grow and juice wheatgrass, along with growing fresh herbs in a sunny south window. Even in the middle of winter I have REAL fresh vegetables.

There is also a favorite vegetable we typically eat raw that is actually more nutritious once cooked - CARROTS. Skip the "baby" carrots, bagged carrots, and get some with the greens still attached since they are fresher, and the greens are also edible. "Cooked whole carrots served with olive oil have up to eight times more beta-carotene than raw baby carrots." Cooking carrots make some of the nutrients more bioavailable, and choose sautéed or steamed methods to help retain more of the food value. If you cook carrots whole, and THEN slice/chop them after being cooked, you'll get more nutrients than if you cut them before you cook them. They are best eaten with some type of oil or fat since beta-carotene is a fat-soluble nutrient that needs to be coated in fat for greatest absorption. The highest concentration of nutrients is just below the skin, so scrub carrots, rather than peel them. If you can find purple carrots, you'll hit the nutrition jack-pot!

Sweet potatoes - Steaming, roasting, or baking can double their antioxidant value, but boiling reduces it. The skin is more nutritious than the flesh, so scrub, rather than peel, sweet potatoes.

-Grainlady"

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/4028525/supermarket-frozen-vegetables#n=41

6 Likes Save July 17, 2016 at 6

ETA: Several posts were deleted after posting, so are no longer there. They seemed to be the ones poking the most fun at the comment.

@Lars: A quick question about your grits recipe above, I normally can figure out when an ingredient is to be added but can't figure out when the EVOO is to be added. Would you mind advising, please.

I add the EVOO after the grits have cooked on the stovetop, usually just before I add the cheese and sausage. The eggs with 2 Tbsp water are added last. Sometimes I forget to add the olive oil, and it's not really necessary, but it does add to the flavor. This is why I add it after the grits have cooked on the stovetop.

Thank you so much. I am seriously considering making your grits (minus the sausage and eggs) to serve with fish. Do you believe they would be good with catfish?

Oddly enough, I was going through an old cookbook that Mother gave to me, entitled "The Best of the Amish Cook (Volume 1, 1991-1996, which has a compilation of the newspaper column by Elizabeth Coblentz. Sure enough, there is the same grapenuts recipe posted above. I haven't tried it, but I may, if I grind some more wheat berries. So, that recipe has been around for a long time, I thought it might be one of those "depression era" recipes but then realized there was too much sugar in it for that. Actually, it sounds terrible, LOL, but might be better with coarsely ground/cracked wheat berries in place of the whole wheat flour...

Annie

The grits I make is supposed to be a complete meal. If you want to serve it with catfish, you can omit the sausage, if you want. I often make it without sausage, if I do not have sausage on hand.

Sometimes when I make it, I add frozen corn to it, and this intensifies the corn flavor.

Thank you again, Lars. I love the addition of corn.

I miss grainlady, too.

Madonna

I revised the recipe to add the quantity of soup base/salt - use one or the other. Lately I've been using Knorr chicken bouillon that comes in large jars. It is very salty, but I use it in place of salt. You can adjust the salt (as well as the herbs) to your taste.

If you omit the eggs, you really do not have to bake it, but if you add frozen corn, you will have it heat it further. The celery will be crunchier without baking, and so you may choose to bake it covered for a short time.

this is the grape nuts recipe