9 breakfasts in one morning

If you're like me, you see the "make a month's worth of crock-pot meals in one day" posts on Pinterest all the time. I always think "I should read that and do it," and then I never do. However, I have been making several days' worth of breakfasts in one morning for a long time, and I thought I'd pass that along today. It has made our mornings so much simpler! I love having pancake and waffle mixes all ready to pull out of the freezer and just mix up. Now, I know you can buy mixes at the store, but I refuse to do that, both for my finances and our diet.  So...

I will grind a whole lot of wheat and barley very first. Sooooo much wheat/barley. When I fill the hopper, I do two soup cans of wheat and one soup can of barley. I add the barley because it has essential amino acids and is really high in fiber and protein--good and good for you! Next I assemble my ingredients. 

 For pancakes and waffles, it's all the same ingredients, just in different amounts. From right to left, we have fresh-ground wheat flour, powdered whole eggs, powdered milk, baking powder, baking soda (in the back), and salt.

 Mix them up in a bowl according to your recipe (find mine at the bottom of this post)

 and then put them into a freezer bag.

I only mix up a single batch at a time and then label it right away once it is in the bag so I don't get things mixed up. I know it would probably be smarter to mix up a HUGE batch of, say, waffle mix and then scoop out a cup of mix at a time and add a certain amount of water and oil, but thinking about how to figure that out makes my head hurt. This way is much easier for me. I reuse my sticky-notes that I stick on the outside of each bag because then I don't have to rewrite them every time!

 For pumpkin pancakes, the recipe is a little more complicated. Again, from right to left, flour, powdered eggs, salt, powdered buttermilk, brown sugar, white sugar, white flour, cinnamon, soda, baking powder, allspice and ginger. Yep, this recipe requires a lot, and I'd much rather mix up 3 or 4 on a Saturday than blearily try to do it all at 6:30 am while my boys are STARVING.

 It looks so pretty sitting in the bowl like this. Again, mix it up and pour into your bag, then slap your label on there.

You can purchase powdered buttermilk at WalMart. Look in the baking aisle near the other milk products--canned evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk, etc. I always find it on the bottom shelf. Once you open this, it needs to be refrigerated, but it will keep for quite a long time and is inexpensive. I think one container of powdered buttermilk will make about one gallon of buttermilk.

And can I just say about powdered eggs? You may think "I would never eat those." But guess what? If you buy the "just add water" pancake mix from the store, you already do! You may think "I would only use those in an emergency." Guess what? In an emergency, you aren't going to want to take the time to do the math and tweak your recipes so they'll work with powdered eggs. Just like anything else, cooking with powder requires a little bit of practice, but it's totally worth it. Powdered eggs are SO much cheaper and will stretch out the refrigerated eggs you buy so you can use them for important stuff like German Pancakes, brownies and scrambled eggs. A can of powdered eggs is usually around $17 and will get you about 110 eggs. And, if you use powdered eggs in cookie dough, you can eat it without worrying about that pesky salmonella (not that that has ever stopped me). When I open a large can of powdered eggs, I divide it into quart jars and then seal them up again, because it takes a LONG time to go through a huge can of powdered eggs. Okay, I am stepping off my powdered egg soap box.

 Voila! 9 breakfasts in about 2 hours. These will last us a month. Quick and healthy and very, very easy. Here are the recipes:

Grandma Donna's Whole Wheat Pancakes
dry ingredients:
4 tablespoons egg powder
1/3 cup powdered milk
2 cups wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
Assemble in a medium bowl and mix well. Pour into a quart-size freezer bag. When you're ready to mix them up, add wet ingredients and mix thoroughly.
wet ingredients:
2 1/2 cups water
1 1/2 tablespoons oil
*This yields about 24 smallish pancakes. When I make it, I make enough pancakes for us to eat for breakfast, then pour the rest into an empty ketchup bottle and refrigerate. The next morning, I will use the remaining batter (shake first). So this recipe actually gives us 2 days worth of pancakes.

Ann Cherry's waffles
dry ingredients:
4 tablespoons egg powder
scant 1/3 cup powdered milk
1 3/4 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
Assemble in a medium bowl and mix well. Pour into a quart-size freezer bag. When you're ready to mix them up, add wet ingredients and mix thoroughly.
wet ingredients:
2 1/4 cups water
1/3 cup oil
*this yields about 6 waffles, depending on your style of waffle maker.

Pumpkin Pancakes
dry ingredients:
2 cups flour (depending on where you live, you should do more or less white flour. At high elevations, this should be all while flour. At lower elevations, you can add more wheat flour. I currently use 1 cup wheat and 1 cup white flour)
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon white sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons powdered buttermilk
1 tablespoon powdered eggs
Mix all ingredients in a medium bowl. Pour into a quart-sized freezer bag. When you're ready to mix them up, add wet ingredients and mix thoroughly.
wet ingredients:
1 cup pumpkin puree (not pie)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons apple-cider vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 3/4 cups water
*again, this makes about 24 smallish pancakes. I do the same thing with this recipe as the whole-wheat pancakes, so we get 2 breakfasts out of this recipe.

Hopefully these little hints are helpful to you. I love the security of having these mixes in my freezer--it is so easy to spend a little bit of time for something healthy and fast at my fingertips, and makes mornings (and sometimes breakfast-for-dinner evenings) go much more smoothly.