In perusing various blogs I've noticed that oatmeal is a breakfast staple when camping. I'm assuming it's because it's easy to buy already portioned out, and is cheap, light weight, and easy to make when at camp.
If you've been following my posts you'll see I've been experimenting with mixing up oatmeal (not from packets though...) and have had mixed results. The thing is, in attempting to eat oatmeal every morning for those experiments, I've come to the realization that if I was on a week long trip, or longer, I'd come to hate oatmeal pretty quickly.
At home, I like a variety of other hot cereals, and wonder why they rarely seem to show up on people's lists of camp meals.
Cream of Wheat - You can buy this in single serve pouches just like instant oatmeal, but lets be honest...it's not all that tasty. I usually drop a few scoops of blueberry baby food into it, and it's much better. I don't see why you couldn't dehydrate baby food into fruit leather so it's good for the trail. Or you could mix in some jam from a little packet. The draw back? Apparently, it's severely lacking in fibre, so it's not such a great choice. I remember at one time there was a whole wheat option, and Bob's Red Mill has Organic Whole Wheat Farina (which is what Cream of Wheat is...) so I'm going to give that a try and see if it's any good.
Red River - (or variations on the theme...) You can get lots of mixed grain hot cereals, from 5 grain to 12 grain and they are a favourite of ours (except Bubbie of course.) Squatch will eat two or three servings of it himself. This one is the highest in fibre of the hot cereals (24% of your daily requirement I think.) The drawback for this one is that clean up is a pain in the butt. I'm going to give the Ziploc bag/cozy method a try with it though.
Oat Bran - I tried this for the first time when I was in the hospital after having Squatch and loved it. A little brown sugar, some chopped pecans and yum. It's also super healthy, high in fibre and it's really easy to make as well. I'll give it a try with the bag/cosy too.
Granola - Normally, I only eat granola on top of my yogurt, but I also love it with milk, and I know you can make it a hot cereal as well, and there's a ton of ways to make your own to your own tastes...plus you can eat it plain out of the bag, which makes it extremely versatile.
After browsing through the Bob's Red Mill website I've found a ton more options, including one that's definitely going on my must try list - Peppy Kernels Hot Cereal. Also, there's one that's like large flake oats, but it's also got other grains in it (5 grain rolled hot cereal) I had to try five different stores to find this, and will let you know how it was tomorrow after I've tried some.
I know there are recipes for breakfasts using millet, quinoa, rice and pretty much any grain you can think of...kind of makes me wonder why you'd want to eat instant oatmeal every morning...
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