Mini Breakfast Quiche

Lately Faith has been rummaging through the freezer looking for frozen breakfast items.  Apparently she's not enjoying the home-assembled instant oatmeal I put together. (More on that here.) She's been pulling things out of there that I'd put in there so long ago that I forgot they were there.  In addition to eating the aforementioned oatmeal, I thought I'd throw in a little variation because nobody really likes a forced diet of something the don't enjoy.

Enter the mini breakfast quiche.  I had some egg whites in the fridge left from another recipe where I needed yolks and some bits and pieces of ingredients left over from other recipes that would have fallen into the black hole that is my fridge if I hadn't used them: fresh spinach, Canadian bacon, mushrooms, small pieces from a block of cheddar cheese.

I was in the kitchen and didn't have my phone or computer in there with me so I decided to just wing it with the recipe.  They really turned out great and both of the girls and I love them!

(This isn't my quiche but looks like it.
Photo courtesy of http://rindymae.blogspot.ca)

Preheat oven to 350.  Spray cupcake pan with cooking spray.  (Be sure to spray well or the eggs will stick.)

12 eggs
1/4 cup milk
2 oz Canadian bacon
3 Tbsp finely chopped onion
1 cup spinach, chopped
5 or 6 sliced mushrooms
Shredded Cheese

Place eggs in bowl with milk and beat.  Mix in spinach.  Using a 1/3 cup measuring cup, scoop into muffin tin but don't fill much more than half full.  Add Canadian bacon, onion, mushrooms to each quiche.  Top with cheese and bake for approximately 20 minutes.  They will puff up tall then collapse as they cool.  Store in the fridge.  To serve, warm in microwave.  Two quiches heated up nicely for 1 minute.

Thrifty Instant Oatmeal

Another of my favorite Pinterest finds is a thrifty little "recipe" for how to make your own instant oatmeal.  The girls eat A LOT of oatmeal, almost daily at times.  We were blowing through a Costco-sized box of instant oatmeal in a few weeks.  That's a bunch of oatmeal for two little girls to consume.

Since I'm not working, I've been looking for ways to cut corners.  While this isn't a HUGE corner to cut, the cost difference between a box of oatmeal is pretty dramatic.  A box of instant Quaker Oats, 10 packets is approximately $4.00 for about 2.5 cups of oatmeal.  The equivalent amount of oatmeal in homemade packets costs $1.10!

1/2 cup quick oats – $.11
 2 T. brown sugar – $.04
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon – $.05
pinch of salt ~.01

These are so easy and fast to assemble.

1/2 cup of quick cooking oats
2T brown sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
a tiny pinch of kosher salt

To prepare, dump in a bowl and add 1 cup of  water. Microwave for a minute or so.  This makes a thick oatmeal so the girls usually add some coconut milk to thin it some.

Just LOVE the cost of these!  I put them into snack sized zipper bags and we reuse the bags so there's no plastic waste going into the garbage from this every day.