I believe that a bowl of oatmeal porridge with apples, cinnamon, raisins and honey*, topped with either yogurt or nuts/seeds makes a perfect morning meal, easy, cheap, green, and balanced.
I detested oatmeal until I was 49 years old. I mean my throat closed if I even thought about eating it. This started at junior Girl Guide camp, where we were served porridge that came in a sharp-edged gelatinous pile of hard lumps and slime. I did a month-long Buddhist retreat in California in the fall of 2001. Every day at breakfast I watched silent, happy grownups gobble up huge bowls of smooth hot porridge laced with various condiments, including yogurt, dried fruit and nuts. After a couple of weeks (maybe the two when we fasted after lunch) I wondered if maybe I was wrong about oatmeal. Needless to say, I soon became an insufferable evangelistic convert.
I went home and to my local health food store, Waterloo's Eating Well, and asked Eileen if she knew how to cook oatmeal so it wasn't lumpy and slimy. She corrected my usage, pointing out that the word is mucilaginous. She suggested that porridge could be made smooth by soaking the oats overnight before simmering them in the morning. I experimented for years, often boiling over an oaty froth while I meditated or cooking a hard mess onto the bottom of the pot. I was simmering a single serving for 45 minutes, a practice both energy-wasting and olfactorily distracting for the morning meditator.
I have honed this method, especially while cooking for groups on retreat in Vermont. I was surprised to find they preferred reheated porridge that had apples and raisins in it to fresh plain stuff that they could add things to. Once you've crossed the line into reheating territory you've got yourself a fast, yummy, healthy breakfast that eliminates the excuses for eating a Pop Tart in the car on the way to work. My recipe is for a pot of six big servings that you make once a week (or twice, depending whether you're alone) at night and pack into containers the next morning, leaving that morning's serving(s) in the pot to heat and eat.
I've shopped around for the cheapest quick oats and found they aren't in the bulk store, but in a big no-name plastic bag in the regular grocery store. It's your business if you want to pay for organic oats. I decided a few years ago that I couldn't afford to worry too much about pesticides and fertilizers.
1. Get out a pot that holds at least 4 quarts and fill it with 11 cups of water. Add 3 teaspoons of salt. Turn it on high. It should boil by the time you've got the apples diced.
2. Measure out 3 cups of packed quick-cooking oats into a container so you can pour it in all at once. Add 1 teaspoon of cinnamon.
3. Peel and dice three apples.
4. When the water boils, stir in the oats and the apples and DON'T WALK AWAY! Stir constantly until it starts to thicken, maybe ten minutes or more. It doesn't have to be as thick as you expect it to be when you eat it – it's going to swell up overnight.
5. Take it off the burner and add three small handfuls of raisins and half a cup of honey* and stir well. If you like (we do) add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract. Mmmmm.
6. Put the cover on and leave it overnight.
7. In the morning, use elbow grease to stir it well to distribute the sunken raisins. Fill containers – you'll get five two-cup bulk food plastic containers, assuming you're having some for breakfast.
8. Add a little bit of water to get things steaming when reheating, stirring well on medium heat.
I like my homemade yogurt on top. Fang feels safely proteined with a couple of heaping spoons of hulled hemp seeds from the bulk store, sort of a super food – $13 will buy about 4 cups. It's dairy-free and probably not really more expensive than using twice as much yogurt twice a day, as I do.
*honey: This week (March 29, 2010) Andrew, in an effort to get to the bottom of his food sensitivities, went off all forms of sweetening. So I made a big pot of oatmeal without honey. The second morning I forgot to add honey to my bowl and you know what? I didn't notice! The apples and raisins add plenty of sweetness and flavor. And Andrew loves a dollop of peanut butter on his.
I detested oatmeal until I was 49 years old. I mean my throat closed if I even thought about eating it. This started at junior Girl Guide camp, where we were served porridge that came in a sharp-edged gelatinous pile of hard lumps and slime. I did a month-long Buddhist retreat in California in the fall of 2001. Every day at breakfast I watched silent, happy grownups gobble up huge bowls of smooth hot porridge laced with various condiments, including yogurt, dried fruit and nuts. After a couple of weeks (maybe the two when we fasted after lunch) I wondered if maybe I was wrong about oatmeal. Needless to say, I soon became an insufferable evangelistic convert.
I went home and to my local health food store, Waterloo's Eating Well, and asked Eileen if she knew how to cook oatmeal so it wasn't lumpy and slimy. She corrected my usage, pointing out that the word is mucilaginous. She suggested that porridge could be made smooth by soaking the oats overnight before simmering them in the morning. I experimented for years, often boiling over an oaty froth while I meditated or cooking a hard mess onto the bottom of the pot. I was simmering a single serving for 45 minutes, a practice both energy-wasting and olfactorily distracting for the morning meditator.
I have honed this method, especially while cooking for groups on retreat in Vermont. I was surprised to find they preferred reheated porridge that had apples and raisins in it to fresh plain stuff that they could add things to. Once you've crossed the line into reheating territory you've got yourself a fast, yummy, healthy breakfast that eliminates the excuses for eating a Pop Tart in the car on the way to work. My recipe is for a pot of six big servings that you make once a week (or twice, depending whether you're alone) at night and pack into containers the next morning, leaving that morning's serving(s) in the pot to heat and eat.
I've shopped around for the cheapest quick oats and found they aren't in the bulk store, but in a big no-name plastic bag in the regular grocery store. It's your business if you want to pay for organic oats. I decided a few years ago that I couldn't afford to worry too much about pesticides and fertilizers.
1. Get out a pot that holds at least 4 quarts and fill it with 11 cups of water. Add 3 teaspoons of salt. Turn it on high. It should boil by the time you've got the apples diced.
2. Measure out 3 cups of packed quick-cooking oats into a container so you can pour it in all at once. Add 1 teaspoon of cinnamon.
3. Peel and dice three apples.
4. When the water boils, stir in the oats and the apples and DON'T WALK AWAY! Stir constantly until it starts to thicken, maybe ten minutes or more. It doesn't have to be as thick as you expect it to be when you eat it – it's going to swell up overnight.
5. Take it off the burner and add three small handfuls of raisins and half a cup of honey* and stir well. If you like (we do) add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract. Mmmmm.
6. Put the cover on and leave it overnight.
7. In the morning, use elbow grease to stir it well to distribute the sunken raisins. Fill containers – you'll get five two-cup bulk food plastic containers, assuming you're having some for breakfast.
8. Add a little bit of water to get things steaming when reheating, stirring well on medium heat.
I like my homemade yogurt on top. Fang feels safely proteined with a couple of heaping spoons of hulled hemp seeds from the bulk store, sort of a super food – $13 will buy about 4 cups. It's dairy-free and probably not really more expensive than using twice as much yogurt twice a day, as I do.
*honey: This week (March 29, 2010) Andrew, in an effort to get to the bottom of his food sensitivities, went off all forms of sweetening. So I made a big pot of oatmeal without honey. The second morning I forgot to add honey to my bowl and you know what? I didn't notice! The apples and raisins add plenty of sweetness and flavor. And Andrew loves a dollop of peanut butter on his.
August 2010 update
Lately I've simplified even more. Now I just put 1/2 cup of large flake oats in a bowl with a handful of raisins and a spoon of maple syrup, cover with boiling water and let sit till the water is absorbed. It's a bit chewy, tastes great with my canned peaches and yogurt on top. No weekly batch, no dirty pots, less electricity, all good.
Reader Tom Ashcraft likes millet for a change. His instructions and comments were worth a whole page.
