Strawberry-Banana "Fluff" Oatmeal

Oats. 

For many, the word merely conjures hazy images of horses, farms, the rolling hills of the countryside.

For me, I feel comfort at the slightest utterance.

Oats have been with me since the inception of my healthy-eating/kick/diet  that never ended. I cannot recall the precise moment in time when I swapped my breakfast of bran flakes for a steamy bowl of the good stuff, but boy, when I did…Little did I know that I was opening a million doors- a million little “oat” doors, that is, of possibilities! 🙂

The fruit, the toppers, the butters, the melters, the spices = so many combinations to explore!

This week I decided to switch up my oatmeal routine which, if you know me, is a pretty big deal. Don’t get me wrong, my melty-banana-half addition was (and has been, and ever will be) amazing, but I wanted to take advantage of the plethora of strawberries I had found at my nearby grocery store ($0.75 per pound- say what???). I could see a compromise could be had and, unlike the outcome of most compromises (let’s be real here), this one ROCKED! 🙂

But, wait a sec, what’s with this “fluff” bit?

Oh, did I forget to mention the simple ingredient that makes your oats DOUBLE in volume without adding more oats?
That’s DOUBLE the pleasure.
DOUBLE the fun. 
DOUBLE the thickness.
DOUBLE your enjoyment of your morning.
What magical ingredient could perform such a feat?

Why egg whites silly. I add in 2 (from large farm-fresh eggs) and interrupt the microwave cooking process a couple times to make sure they don’t solidify on me. You will be oh-so-amazed at the outcome.

You can thank me later 😉

Strawberry-Banana “Fluff” Oatmeal

Ingredients
1/2 cup rolled oats
dashes of cinnamon
1 cup water
2 egg whites
1/4 banana, chopped
1/2 cup sliced strawberries
1 tablespoon ground flaxseed (optional)
1 tablespoon cashew butter (optional but not really)

Directions
1. Combine the first 2 ingredients in your oats bowl.
2. Add the water and egg whites and whisk together until uniform in consistency.
3. Stir in banana and strawberries.
4. Cook oats as you normally would, whisking occasionally and adding in the flaxseed and nut butter halfway through the cooking process. (I prefer to leave the butter till the end, and I make it sink to the bottom of my bowl because it’s awesome to get a huge spoonful of gooey nut butter 🙂

What are your favorite oatmeal add-ins/flavors/combos???

Slushy days & Breakfast craze

Just some pics from early in the week…

This week started off slushily here in Chitown. Rain, sleet, snow, we had it all and inches of it to boot. In fact, I had another mishap. Remember that time when I got soaked by a passing car because I was walking on the street to avoid unshoveled sidewalks? Well this was worse. Actually soaked by a car during a snowstorm while waiting for the bus. At that point I embodied the trifecta of misery: cold, wet, and, well really cold. 

But the week got better, trust me, a lot better.

How better? Well let me give you some hints:

I’m an intern!!!!! (for this lovely lady) [I put Anne in because she’s what I imagine a stylish intern looks like. And because she’s fabulous.]

That’s right, starting in late spring I will be working as an intern for a registered dietitian! Although I’m not confident on all the particulars, I do know that I will be playing some part in blogging, magazine article writing, and TV segment set-up(ping) and brainstorming! How amazing is this?! Especially considering the fact that I have zero official experience in nutrition & wellness. All that’s apparent on my resume is my passion for wellness, something I know now has not gone unnoticed 🙂 I’m over the moon about this because now it means that my path towards becoming a registered dietitian is actually beginning! It’s not another unrealized dream of mine that takes a backseat to life’s realities. On top of all that, this experience will give me so much. I am so happy.

Can you even believe that I have more wonderfulness to share? Well I do, and it begins with a break and ends in a fast and really has little in common with either of those words. What am I getting at?

Breakfast.

It really is sad that this beautiful opportunity to begin the day is cast as a necessary evil by the media. It’s all in the stream of headlines: “You need breakfast in order to lose weight.” “Breakfast eaters are skinnier than non-breakfast eaters.” “Grab ‘n go breakfasts.” What happened to sitting down, slowing down, and savoring every bite of something that not only will fill you nutritionally but spiritually as well? Having breakfast should be a conscious act, not a obligatory task. And that’s precisely what these following recipes/ideas are all about. Play around with them. Enjoy it. (Because I certainly do)

Let’s start with a simple egg-bake recipe. It’s a crowd-pleaser and oh-so easy to make for any meal and what’s better is that it’s adaptable. Add a myriad of veggies, cheeses, and meats (don’t worry carnivores, I got you 😉 to this dish and it will come out just fine. Double the recipe and use the leftovers for this week’s breakfasts or host a brunch for your friends and wow them with your cooking prowess. Just make it.

Basic Egg-Bake (serves 2)

• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk (I use almond, but whatever you want is fine)
• Any amount of cheese (mozzarella melts nicely)
• Any amount of veggies (I recommend mushrooms, broccoli, green/yellow/red peppers, onions, asparagus)
• Any amount of meat
• Salt/pepper/seasoning to taste

Preheat oven to 350-375 degrees (F). Spray a casserole dish or individual ramekins with oil. Mix all ingredients together, whisking until everything is evenly distributed and combined and pour into the dish(es). Place in oven and bake for roughly 30 minutes or until eggs are set. Take out of oven and serve:
Basic Egg Bake

Next up, the baked oatmeal. Great for tossing in the oven while you take a shower/get ready in the morning/do yoga/browse food blogs. Immensely satisfying and even better with toppings like peanut butter (or PB2), local jam, or dousing it with more milk for the drowned effect. I use pumpkin puree but you could easily use mashed banana or applesauce and add other fruit of your choosing, just omit the stevia.

Pumpkin Cranberry Baked Oatmeal (serves 2)

• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• heaping 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• pinch of cloves
• 1/4 tsp (or more) of ground ginger
• 1 packet of stevia
• heaping 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
• 1 cup almond milk
• 1/2 cup cranberries (frozen works fine)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Combine dry ingredients in one bowl and wet in the other. Pour dry into the wet and stir to combine. Last add the cranberries, pour into a greased casserole dish or ramekins, and bake for roughly 30 minutes. Take out, serve, and top with your choice of deliciousness, which could include…. 🙂
Pumpkin Cranberry Baked Oatmeal

Cheesecake Topping (makes about 1 cup)

(Sandwiched between Bittman vegan pancakes with bananas & strawberries)

• 1 cup low-fat cottage cheese
• 2 packets of stevia, to taste
• berries/fruit to flavor (I used strawberries)

Whip all of the ingredients together in a food processor and voila! a great topping for pancakes, baked oats, regular oats, toast, basically, well anything 🙂 Cheesecake Topping

Have a tremendous week and don’t forget to start your day off with deliciousness 🙂

Blogging for Productivity

It’s Sunday morning which, for any college student, means one thing: homework. And lots of it. I have so much to do and it feels as though this day (day of rest? bahhh!) has to end with me completing most of the things on my to-do list which, in case you were wondering (you probably weren’t, but I’m going to tell you anyway) includes:

• Writing some of a paper on the Civil Rights Movement and how it initially challenged and later rejected New Deal Liberalism
• Reading a biography of Ella Baker (fabulous woman by the way, I really recommend the book!) in order to write said paper in bullet point #1 (I’m only 38% through, so says my Kindle–eek!)
• Doing my various readings for the week, most of which are due on Wednesday
• Writing an annotated bibliography & developing an outline for my sociology paper on childhood obesity solutions (due on Wed)
• Doing the laundry. It needs to happen.
• Making/baking something or other. Because it’s a stress-reliever for me and I like food.
• Compiling a list of items I’ll be making this week. Curious as to what that may entail? 
• Baked Oatmeal Snack Bars –I’ll be adapting a recipe from Kath Eats Real Food
• Sugar-Free Banana Bread –adapted from Chocolate-Covered Katie
• Pumpkin Butter –another one from KERF

Those are just the non-original recipes I’m thinking of at the moment, although those are all subject to change, so don’t hold me to them! Wondering why no main courses? Well this weekend I bought FOUR squash (3 acorn/carnival + 1 spaghetti) and I will continue this week to come up with multiple ways to stuff squash and eat it. These ideas, however, need some time to germinate, and considering the scant amount of mental space I can truly devote to creativity right now, original recipes are getting put on the backburner.

But the biggest news is that I’m back to blogging 😀 and I’m going to make an sincere effort to get pics up with my posts to make things a bit more fun/visual/salivation-stimulating. Check back for a revamped Recipes page soon. I plan on putting in a lot more, adding/deleting portions, etc… 

But as any dutiful college senior should say: “Homework first!”

Here comes the–wait, why is it still dark out?

Wait…where did my sun go?
You know, the one that was bright and beaming and peaking through the trees at 5:15am just to say a special hello to me? The one who made it comfortable (and seemingly acceptable) to get up this early? Well, apparently the sun likes to sleep in now, but that won’t stop me from getting a jump start on my day! Even if it looks like it’s 2am outside…

The clock is ticking down to my return to school and I’m hurrying to fix all the meals/snacks/breakfasts I can without having to worry about not having the right equipment. (Although I’m trying my best to equip myself with necessary tools, such as a new cutting board, some knives, a blender, and a cheese grater I picked up at Goodwill for $0.49 :P) This explains my current meddlings with steel-cut oats, which I thought I would like buuuttttt:

Cons

• They’re dense. And not in the stupid, Ron-Weasley-to-Hermione way. They physically don’t puff up like my lovely rolled oats are so fond of doing, which makes even a supposed “hefty” amount of oats (1/3 cup = 220 kCal; while 3/4 cup oats = 210 kCal) look small and sad in my bowl when it’s done. I’m pretty big on visual cues when it comes to food and I like to look like I’m having a enormous breakfast. So this is a problem.
• They take a long time to cook. Mind, I say “long time” after experiencing the seemingly instant gratification of my overnight oats for the past couple weeks (when really they take 8 hours+ to get to that point) But this is 25+ minutes I have to stand at the stove, stirring the stuff around to make sure it didn’t burn to the bottom. I don’t get to sleep while this one cooks (although I have learned of methods to cook steel-cut oats that just require plunking the stuff in a slow cooker overnight on low). 
• They’re a wee bit more expensive than regular oats. I’m sure this varies from bulk section to bulk section, but in mine, steel-cut oats were a good 10-20 cents more per pound than their rolled oat counterparts.

Pro

• Their chewy, nutty texture. This is their main selling point. These oats are legit oats and boy do they taste like it. Now if only they could just get puffier…

Anyway, that’s my bit on steel-cut oats. I don’t know if I’ll spend too much time with them, but I’ll at least have to polish off this small baggie I bought myself.

Because I’ve been lazy busy lately, I haven’t gotten around to posting about all the wonderful stuff I’ve been making, so I would like to direct your attention to my Recipes page where I post the links to all the recipes I’ve tried and loved. I promise to get more posts/reviews up once I get back to school and into the groove of being a perpetually stressed, paper-writing college student again 🙂

How do you like your oats? Steel-cut? Rolled? Instant? Overnight? Bright ‘n Early?
P.S. Anybody got any tips for buying a blender on a budget? 

Cheesy Veggie Pasta Bake + Overnight Oats (Slightly modified Version #2)

You know what’s exciting? The oats I just finished. They were phenomenal.
Not even kidding. They were so spectacular that they transcend the need for exclamation points. But more on my slightly modified (but oh so worth it) overnight oats a little later. To honor chronology, let me begin with my endeavors with the Veggie Pasta Bake last night from Budget Bytes, or, as I like to call it the Cheesy Veggie Pasta Bake.

Ah pasta. Sigh. How I love thy empty carbs and the way you can fill up my hungry tummy at the end of the day. Okay, maybe I don’t love the “empty carb” part but whole wheat pasta is sorta expensive & my family likes the taste of white/regular pasta better (3 against 1, majority rules in this house). While I love just throwing noodles in a pot of boiling water & tossing them with sauce 10 minutes later, I find baking pasta to be really gratifying. Maybe it’s the whole unrushed, I’m-not-cursing-the-deceitful-controls-of-the-electric-stove part, or perhaps it has something to do with the enormous amount of ooey, gooey, cheese that goes into this particular dish. Give it a go and you decide.

Needless to say my love for this dish is not unfounded. This was not my first time using this recipe but it is the first time I probably followed it’s ingredient list somewhat religiously. Here are some of my alterations:

• Used canned diced tomatoes in lieu of fire-roasted–as always, this had to do with availability not preference. Fire roasted would no doubt yield a more flavorful dish (the plain diced tomatoes tend to taste a bit blah in the end) but I bet the same result could be achieved by adding some basil/Italian spices to the mix (will definitely do next time, because I doubt I’ll have fire-roasted on hand)
• No 16 oz. whole milk mozzarella here!–So I appreciate the inherent chessyness of this dish (and I praise it) but dear lord, you certainly only need 8 oz of mozzarella, especially when you’re using parmesan as well! Also, Budget Bytes insists that the “whole milk” part is crucial and I have to disagree. Although maybe it’s because I’m naive to the merits of whole milk cheese, the skimmed frozen version of mozzarella cheese works just fine here.
• Cut back on the cayenne–This reduction was purely because I’ve been notoriously known for adding too much spice to baked dishes (even though I followed the recipe!) and the fam has a hard time with it. In retrospect though, putting in just 1/4 tsp could have been upped to 1/2 tsp and no crazy spicyness, mouth-burning, Aly-cursing would have ensued. Overall, my family and I found that the dish could have used more flavors, but perhaps next time I’ll turn more to the Italian spices than red pepper.

Bottom Line: 4 out of 5 stars (Like I said before, the dish was missing the Italian flavors required of any true pasta dish. Plan on adding oregano/basil next time)

Willingness to Make Again?: Yep! 

Now for my Overnight Oats (Slightly modified but entirely worth it Version #2):

Remember how I said I love my oatmeal super duper thick? Well, I was afraid that switching to overnight oats would mean forgoing all that yummy thickness that I got from cooking the oats. Boy oh boy was I wrong. Last night I devised a plan. A plan to reduce the liquid-to-oats ratio in the bowl to create the perfect thick overnight oats. So, without further ado, here’s what I did (the underlined items were ones where I changed the quantities from my original overnight oats):

Night before:

• Combine 3/4 c rolled oats, 1/3 c unsweetened almond milk, 1/3 c nonfat plain yogurt, spoonful of ground flaxseed and 1 large banana mashed in a bowl, mixing everything together.
• Stick in the fridge and leave uncovered overnight

Next morning:

• Open up the fridge the next morning (it felt akin to Christmas here!) and voila! Perfectly thickened overnight oats!
• Add 1/8 cup Spanish peanuts to the top (or anything you want) for some crunch

[I would have snapped a picture of this beautiful bowl of nummies before I devoured them but my lack of a camera nearby combined with my ravenous appetite stopped me 🙂 ]

A Southwest Burger Salad, Zucchini Fries & Banana Chunk Overnight Oats (Version #1)

This weekend was…interesting to say the least. For the umpteenth time this summer, my family and I traversed “Up North” to our Grandma’s cottage (aka a trailer) on a beautiful crystal clear lake surrounded by forest. Usually we have no particular rhyme or reason to do so, we just love the relaxation & break away from the hum-drum home life, but this time there happened to be a main event.
Main event = An annual lobster dinner (previously opened to only “adults”) that contains a theme (this year’s: crazy) and usually results in some pretty toasted individuals by the end of the night. (And by “toasted” I mean singing incomprehensibly & dancing in diapers) Needless to say, it was a fun time. While Grandma, Mom, and my sister Katie dressed up as a gaggle of gangsters (which, if you knew my Grandma, you would find really funny), my brother Tony and I went as a twosome: I the 1960s mother (complete with itchy wig & housecoat) and he as my 6 ft., 200lb. baby (complete with bonnet & pink cloth diaper).
But I digress.
We got back home yesterday in the afternoon and decided on throwing some hamburgers (and hotdogs for the sis) on the grill for a quick/easy dinner. I thought that was all fine, but where was the veggie? And that’s when I googled “baked zucchini” and (after much much perusing through various recipes) I settle on these Baked Zucchini Fries:

Let me just say a couple words about my friends the zucchini fries:

• It’s messy business. Individually dipping each stick into the egg white and then rolling it in the bread crumb mixture left my fingers full of wet bread crumbs (and the kitchen counter pretty dismal as well)
• The thinner, the crispier. If you’re more about the crispy fries, slice the zucchini as thin as you can. But believe me, they are wonderful no matter how thin/thick the slices.
• It makes the house smell like Fazolis. Apparently, according to my brother Tony. To me, the smell was just characteristic of yummy Italian spices goodness 🙂
• Alterations made: Just a few for portion’s sake:
• Used 1 larger zucchini instead of 2 medium ones (don’t think it will make enough? Wrong! I had 2 cookie sheets full!)
• Used 1 egg white as opposed to 2. I just wanted to see how far one egg white would get me. Turns out, pretty darn far 🙂
• Breadcrumbs = 2 pieces of wheat bread in the food processor. They don’t specify how many pieces of bread you need in the original recipe, so I started with one slice of bread’s worth of crumbs and then needed to go back for more later.

Bottom Line: 5 out of 5 stars! [the health factor of this recipe cannot be denied, a great alternative to icky greasy french fries!]

Willingness to Make Again?: You betcha! Even my family loved this (and they have grown wary of my veggie-laden dishes)

And as far as the burgers go, I decided to “healthify” my plate a bit by forgoing a bun in lieu of some green leaf lettuce, sliced tomatoes, and sliced onions. So, basically, it was a small burger salad that filled me up just as much as a bun would, but without the needless calories (the bun bread was of the white variety). The “southwest” part comes from the type of burgers we made, which were some delicious mixture of spicyness & juicyness (in other words, I have no idea what exactly was in them :P)

Now, drum roll please as I cross the threshold from dinner to breakfast and into the world of…

Overnight Oats.

I’ll admit, it has taken a LOT for me to change my oatmeal routine. I love my hot oatmeal in the morning, thickened after cooking and cooling for 10 minutes, but when I was listening to the podcast (and radio show, for you Minnesotans) “Dishing up Nutrition,” I realized that I should probably be starting my day off with something more than just oats & a piece of fruit. [They specifically addressed how healthy eating a bowl of straight up oatmeal really was and turns out, I’m missing out!] As in, I need some more protein & healthy fat in there.

Around that same time, another thought occurred to me: I just bought nonfat plain yogurt at the grocery. 

Yogurt = protein :O

Now I knew I had read some recipes involving oatmeal & yogurt, so I began hastily googling & reviewing my favorite sites for some recipes, and came upon these Overnight Oats by Kath Eats Real Food:

Basic Overnight Oats:

• Equal parts milk, oats, and yogurt (I used 3/4 cup of each. Hers calls for 1/2 or 1/3 but I don’t tend to use that many toppings, but that may also soon change…) Mixed together the night before and placed in the fridge (covered or uncovered).
• Nuts, fruit, dried fruit, etc… as toppings to add to it in the morning

The blog has a LOT of different versions, but as a beginner, I started out simple and topped my oats in the morning with some chopped banana and a small handful of spanish peanuts.

Bottom Line: 4.5 out of 5 stars [I was pleasantly surprised about how much I enjoyed this dish, seeing as I cringed at the idea of eating oats cold. Nevertheless, I give it a 4.5 merely for the sake of me wanting to try more topping/mixing combos–there’s SO MANY out there!]

Willingness to Make Again?: Yep, in all the different varieties too! [I suggest either going to Kath Eats Real Food OR Oh She Glows for some great overnight oats recipes!]

Moral of the story? Try something new! 🙂