Recession Drembreakfast Part 1 - Nutritionally balanced for 0.25 eur p.p.

This morning, I've had a warm oatmeal porridge with a dash of butter and a spoon of confiture. Swap the jam for a tangerine, add a small cup of yoghurt, and you are getting a perfectly nutritionally balanced breakfast for less than what you paid for that croissant I know you'd grabbed on your way to work.
How so? You see, I've been using the carrefour/gb no.1 brand oatmeal for years just because I think most breakfast cereals are evil, loaded with sugar and whatnot, and I just want some plain honest porridge (or one of my favourite brand over-prices muesli, but maybe not this year :)). I make porridge with water; the recipe calls for 2 cups oatmeal for 3 cups water, but that's about double of what I can eat in the morning. So you can budget your breakfast like this:
100 g oatmeal from the 0.67 pack - 0.07 eur
a teeny coffeespoon of butter - 0.06 eur
(you can get economy brand butter for 3eur/kg, i've just checked in a shop :))
1 tangerine - 0.05 eur
(just got 1kg of the same no.1 carrefour/gb brand, and actually counted the tangerines just for this blog)
100 g of cheaper skinny drinking
yoghurt - 0.07 eur

My spreadsheet arrives at 0.25 eurocents. Add salt, water, electricity to boil, and even some of this confiture if you want - it's still really cheap, while fueling your body in a proper way and keeping you full until the lunchtime.

Those who think it must taste like scrap paper or take effort to make - thank you for the compliment, but I do not possess a kind of self-discipline required to stay loyal to this particular package for four years just for the price/healthy factor. It tastes really good, it takes but a few minutes to cook, and if you are bored with the porridge, you can always let the oatmeal soak with some milk and dried fruit while you take your morning shower, and voila - almost eco-muesli. If I got my hands on some (cheap) frozen berries, I'd put them in a chopper with yoghurt and just a gram of sugar, and then add the oatmeal to thicken my smoothie. Finally, there must be a way to make some delicious oat-cookies I don't know about.

Another way for the all-food-groups-pastry-price-equivalent breakfast is a medium egg, one slice of wholegrain traditional bread cut in half (one with frugal jam, the other with frugal butter), and whatever small vegetable/fruit you could get cheaply. I'll be back with the seasonal food charts quite soon. Yet another way is my made-from-scratch-pancakes, which are more Sunday brunch due to the time involved. Even then I focus on the cut-price basic ingredients such as cheap flour, cheap milk, cheap fruit or cheese.

You see, early in the morning economy brand food is justified. Our senses are not awake yet, so we are probably unable to appreciate nuances that come with fine foods. And while with food you often get what you paid for, there are a few exceptions - for example, this trailer that sells dairy on Sundays - when it comes to milk, they are superior to whatever you find in a shop in terms of both price and quality. The only cheap ingredient I feel bad about is eggs - I now get barn chickens' (wouldn't go near caged ones), but just because of my super-frugal-phase. Everybody, myself included, should buy free range or bio, as much as you can afford it. Egg-laying hens should not suffer THAT much for us :)

That's all. Come back tomorrow!