The supermarket near us is still renovating and clearing out food items. Last week we found a large frozen chicken potpie, a lemon poppy-seed loaf, a canister of steel cut oats, and a tube of tomato paste, all for half price. The tomato paste is in the pantry, and we've been eating the other things
Part One: I haven't seen any deals lately on cold cereal, and with just two of us I don't always feel like messing up a pan with oatmeal. I've tried microwaving quick oats by the bowlful, but they're sometimes too mushy. I thought these steel cut oats would be a good fit for Budget101's Instant Oatmeal mix. You run some of the oats to powder in the blender, then mix them with the rest and add your choice of sweeteners, dried fruit, etc.
I used up a few cups of the oats, plus a bit of cinnamon, brown sugar, and a few stray Craisins. I also added a dash of salt to each bag (the recipe doesn't call for it).
Would I make this particular recipe again? Probably not, at least not without a couple of modifications. A little more spice or sugar wouldn't be unwelcome. Or just eating some of the Greek yogurt and fruit without going to all the trouble of baking it.
I think it turned out pretty well. You have to experiment a bit with the amount of boiling water you add, as it's easy to get it too thin (and then it's hard to eat). If you don't feel like the oats are "cooked" enough by just adding hot water, you can try microwaving them instead. (That is, add the mix and water to your cereal bowl and microwave, not nuke it in the bag.)
And it's definitely an easy breakfast option when you're not up to much more than groping for the spoons and the jar of coffee.
The Part Two this week, I'm still debating the success of. I wanted to make something higher-protein, so I tried out a recipe for "pancake bowls." This particular recipe required most of a container of Greek yogurt, several eggs, some frozen fruit, and a few other things like baking powder and flour (no fat, very little sugar); you combine most of the ingredients, top with the fruit, and bake until solid. The results? well, don't expect a Dutch Baby. It's more like...baked yogurt and eggs. (Or Tubby Custard.) Which, I guess, is not a bad thing, and it's quite nutritious; it's just not necessarily a delicious thing.
Each of these little pans is supposed to be one serving, but I can't manage more than a piece at a time. Now that they've chilled in the fridge, I think I'm going to cut them in smaller portions and freeze them, then microwave when I want one.
Now there's a thought.
1 comment:
Our family has always liked what we call raw oats, either quick oats or rolled oats poured in a bowl and covered with milk and eaten raw with whatever sweetener you like. I've always been fond of brown sugar, raisins, dates, nuts, honey, etc... Over the years we added less sweatener and still enjoyed it. We don't eat oats anymore, or other grains most of the time. I miss the raw oats. For the milk we started with dairy milk and switched to almond milk when I discovered dairy was a big culprit in the swelling and pain in my hands.
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