Part of trying to be more self-sufficient is trying to take care of more of your own needs.
One thing that I've always wondered about is cereal. Usually, we are accustomed to a variety of processed grains, combined with sugar and other ingredients, that has become the common "cereal" of our day. Personally I don't need everything to be sweet and would prefer not to have the second or third ingredient be sugar and I don't mind eating things that are little less "refined," if you know what I mean. Recently, I encountered a cereal that gave me a lot of good ideas!
KASHI GO-LEAN VANILLA CLUSTERS
This one caught me off guard. We like to explore options and try new things, and a great byproduct of that is learning to think outside of the traditional box. This cereal looked both interesting and healthy, and it may have forever changed our lives in the years to come.
Many of the ingredients are easy to grow and easy "prepare" to be used as a cereal. This has given me a lot of hope for the years to come. If we can grow our own delicious cereal and be provided with our own fresh milk from a variety of dairy animals, life will certainly be more self-sufficient, not to mention wholesome and healthy. Here are a few of the ingredients that caught my eye.
MILLET & POPPED SORGHUM
This was so cool to see. We've already grown our own millet in the past, and I certainly plan on planting some this year anyway. It is a great grain for many uses, cereal included. The "popped sorghum" caught me off guard though. Basically, it is like a crunchy little mini-popcorn. I've seen sorghum growing on other homesteads, like , and was looking forward to growing our own anyway. I knew that the grain could be used as well as the stalk, but never knew that you pop it. To not only be able to pop it an enjoy it, but to use it as a cereal too is very encouraging. It certainly tasted great in this mix!
RED BEANS AND PEAS
This was also cool to see. Check out those red beans in my hand above. They have just been flattened into "flakes" and dried. The flavor didn't really stick out in the mix, and it actually took me a while to figure out what these were. I personally never thought of using beans or peas in a cereal mix, but I'm certainly planning on doing so now. Both are easy enough to grow, and they certainly seem easy enough to prepare to use as a cereal.
PEPITAS
Those tasty little pumpkin seeds! Again, a common food already for many, but I had never considered their use as a cereal. The blend that we enjoyed them in was excellent, and even by simply combining some of these pepitas with a few other easy ingredients, a healthy and homemade cereal would be easy to come by.
So, the question then it, what other foods could we grow ourselves to use for our morning breakfast meals? Has anyone out there used millet, popped sorghum, red beans, or pumpkin seeds in cereal before? Have you ever grown your own or tried growing anything to use for cereal? If so, let me know, as we are exploring our options.
As always, I'm
and here's the proof:
proof-of-inspirational-cereal