This project has also been on the go since “No-Buy July”. I have muesli for breakfast most mornings and I usually mix a bag of cheapie with a bag of the more expensive stuff to give me a blend that I like. Unfortunately this tends to generate some waste in the form of packaging and since neither are organic, it was clear I could do better.
My original concept was to buy in a large (somewhere between 5 and 15kg) bag of organic rolled oats and then put together a “muesli concentrate” which would contain all the other bits to turn rolled oats into muesli. This would then by mixed, in a pre-determined proportion, with the rolled oats to make the finished muesli. As with many plans, it really didn’t turn out like that.
The organic rolled oats were pretty easy to get (from Honest to Goodness) and I got a 5kg bag for experimentation, next time the bag will be bigger. Storage of bulk rolled oats can be an issue because from previous experience I found that they attract pantry moth like nothing else, even into what I thought was a sealed container. So whether there were moth eggs already in the oats or they have the equivalent of ninjas on their team I have been unable to find out. Even the often touted hack of putting some bay leaves in with the oats only resulted in a nicely worded note from the pantry moths thanking me for the added flavour.
Anyway, the only thing that seems to work around here for any length of time is to store the bulk oats in the freezer, which is what I do.
Now for the other bits!
My original idea was to get hold of a collection of dried fruits and nuts and then mix them to my own specification and add in some wheat bran straws (which add fibre and crunch) all hopefully in bulk and package free, to make a muesli concentrate. In practice what I found was that a bulk food place (The Source) which was not too far away had not only the straws, but also an organic fruit and nut mix containing: Organic Raisins, Organic Sultanas, Organic Cashew Pieces, Organic Almonds, Organic Pepitas, Organic Dried Apple, which was already pretty much what I was after.
Just for the sheer fun of it, my first mix also had a percentage (2%) of puffed brown rice (also bulk from The Source), but I found the brown rice really didn’t add anything to the mix that I liked so once I had consumed them I didn’t buy any more.
My initial experimentation to develop my formulation meant buying smaller amounts of everything just to try, so I took my own roughly 375ml recycled jars to buy the bulk materials in. Trap for young players: don’t get the puffed rice in the jar that used to contain crushed garlic!
Now having more or less settled on my favourite formulation I got hold of some bigger (2 litre) glass jars to store the straws and fruit & nut mix in. My formulation is (by weight):
Organic rolled oats 75%
Organic Fruit & Nut mix 18%
Wheat bran straws 7%
All I do is weigh enough to make a kilogram of muesli into my clip top cereal container and turn it over and over (making sure to hold the pouring hatch closed, just sayin’) until the straws and F&N mix are distributed homogenously through the mix. The only packaging involved is on the oats and that is a paper bag which is recyclable.
Cost wise it works out to about 80% of the cost per kg of an equivalent organic muesli bought packaging free.
2019 Update
OK, so I was happy with the taste side of the muesli but when I looked a bit harder at the costing, the organic fruit and nut mix was $40 per kilo! This seemed to me a bit much, and I could do better. So once the load I had bought was used I bought some bulk organic sultanas and rasins for less than $10 per kilo and then mixed them up with some casgews and organic almonds which we already had but were not being used. After a bit of playing around with percentages I found a mix that I really like and which is much cheaper that the organic mix. The percentages in the final mix are as follows -
Rasins 5.5%
Sultantas 5.5%
Cashews 4%
Almonds 3%
