Monday, November 3, 2008

Oatmeal

I am a recent convert to the joys of proper oatmeal for breakfast. You see, my only real experience with it before recently was the little packets of instant, pre-flavored oatmeal that we used to take backpacking. They were lumpy and goopy - something my texture-sensitive mouth couldn't handle very well. As I've developed a more sophisticated palette, they also revealed themselves to be overly sweetened with a somewhat chemical tasting aftertaste. And they just didn't fill me up properly. The large amounts of sugar and high fructose corn syrup meant that they were a quick high, but also a quick crash. I'd be hungry, starving, shaking with low bloodsugar within an hour.

So, I have started making real oatmeal on the stove (I have tried the microwave, but it always boils over - no matter what size bowl I use - and makes a big mess. Besides, I don't really like using the microwave to cook...feels inauthentic somehow.) I have tried it in the past, and wasn't impressed. No matter how much sugar and cinnamon I added, it never tasted very good. Well, I have discovered my error - no vanilla, and using water instead of milk. So now, I use Scottish oatmeal, which is not in flakes like "traditional" American oatmeal, or steel cut oats, milk, and a bit of vanilla. The result is creamy, flavorful, and filling. Yes, it is still a bit goopy, but as long as it tastes good, I can handle it. NOW I understand why people like eating oatmeal. Best of all, there I know what is in my food - no HFC, no chemicals. Hurrah!

1 comment:

Amy Mulzer said...

Put 1 cup of steel cut oats and 4 cups of water and/or milk with a pinch of salt in a crock-put before you go to bed at night. Set it to low, and have it plugged into a timer so it kicks in 4 hours before you get up. In the morning, you wake up to perfect warm oatmeal. Yum.