Doing porridge, frugally

I just buy a bag of cheap apples, chop one up fine each morning to add to my porridge. At this time of year you could stew some baking apples and add some each day.

I like stewed apple and cinnamon on mine it's like eating pudding for breakfast, carrot raisin and cinnamon are also good as overnight oats but don't think it would work well warm.

You need a bit of salt to bring out the flavour of the oats, even if you add sugar or jam for sweet porridge.

A spoonful of cocoa or drinking chocolate powder makes chocolatey porridge.

A squirt of toothpaste would make minty porridge and be good for your teeth :-)

I make mine the old-fashioned way; mix it up with an equal quantity of water and a good pinch of salt the night before, leave it over gentle warmth overnight (on top of our condensing boiler, which has a 60l hot-water tank that stays warm all night - OH gets up for work at 5.30am & appreciates hot water for shaving) and then cook up with the same amount of water again in the morning. I'm afraid I add a spoonful of apple butter and another of cream to flavour it, which is pure luxury - I make apple butter with our windfalls, and the cream is from a local herd of Guernsey cows - but it fills me up until lunchtime!

I like to cook it with apples and cinnamon, (i use my multi cooker on porridge setting and I use unsweetened almond milk more often than not) I find it sweet enough like that most of the time. I may use a bit of date nectar if I'm having a sweet tooth day but usually if I add a bit of banana or blueberries (usually bought reduced or frozen) it's sweet enough.
I nearly always put chia seeds in my porridge after cooking as well but they aren't all that cheap (a 150g bag costing me £1 lasts about 2 weeks I think).