Oatmeal: Long Time Love Affair

Since I was a small child (we're talking age two or three) I have LOVED oatmeal.  I remember my Me-Ma making it for me with warm milk, butter, and brown sugar.  Essentially, it was like dessert for breakfast!  To this day, that is my FAVORITE way to eat it.  But let's be realistic: while tasting amazing, this compilation of tastiness isn't the best for my body AND my blood sugar!  Another problem I have is that buying a box of Quaker Oatmeal is about $4 at Kroger.  They have everything from low sugar to low carb, to blah blah blah.  I'm a sucker for "low sugar", so I always buy some (remember -oatmeal obsession!).  Well, I hate to break it to ya Quaker, but I've found a better-for-me way to consume my beloved oats.

Remember how I talked about being agog during my first trip to the co-op?  Remember how I said I picked up some quick oats?  Well here's what I did with them!  

First, I photographed them.  See?  Lovely, yes?

After I snapped a few pictures, I put them in my bitty food processor.  While I LOVE my gigantic and heavy Cuisinart food processor, it's just...well, it's HEAVY, cumbersome, and a little too large for a project like this.  So I dumped the sack of oats into my bitty food processor by Black & Decker and gave it a chop-chop.  I will admit to perhaps being a tad overzealous with my chopping -they were a little more powdery than I expected.  But it's just that the button is so nice to push....

Anyway, the oats were chopped and fit nicely into a quart mason jar.  Because I enjoy cinnamon in my oatmeal, I added a tbs of cinnamon to the recently chopped oats and gave it a shake.  After the shaking (and of COURSE there was vocal accompaniment and dancing...) I settled myself in to have some!  How could I create it and NOT give it a try!!!

The beauty of this recently chopped quick oats combo?  It's now INSTANT oatmeal!  Bingo-bango-you're-welcome.  I put the kettle on (and joyfully sang, "Suki put the kettle on....") and once whistling, I added water slowly while stirring the quickly expanding INSTANT oatmeal!  It was like magic, y'all. No joke.

After the oatmeal sat for a few minutes (not so that it would taste better, it's just that the bowl was so hot that I scared the dog yelling after it burned my fingers...), I added some honey and then I ATE IT.

There wasn't any butter, there wasn't any brown sugar, there just wasn't anything that needed to be added.  It was rich and thick, gently sweetened, and had a nice cinnamon kick.  I ate the entire bowl while it was still steaming!  To try my hand with a few additional flavors towards the end of the bowl I added some nutmeg (tasty!), a light sprinkling of raw cane sugar (totally worth the addition!), and a little bit of powdered all-spice (that was a little much).

This was not only EASY, but is so healthy!  Whole grain quick oats, and whatever you want to mix in?  YES!  This has quickly become a family (TMV likes it alright, which means he eats it if I fix it for him!  Heh) favorite, right along with the crisp clean chai tea lattes!

Happy eating!

-XO-
B