Baked Oatmeal with Fruit & Nuts

By Kathryn Washburn Breighner

I start most days with oatmeal in some fashion: slow cooked (old fashioned only), muesli, or granola (the last 2 homemade, of course). Today I tried something new and it will now be added to my oatmeal menu: baked oatmeal.

This is simple to do: it's just milk, oatmeal and fruit baked for 30 minutes. It is thick and creamy and leftovers can be refrigerated and reheated in the microwave.

Heat in the microwave for 3 minutes:
3 1/2 c milk
1/2 c sweetener of choice such as brown sugar, honey or maple sypup

Lightly oil a casserole dish and to it add:
The milk and sugar mixture
1 1/2 c whole oats
Dash of salt
2 t vanilla
2 t cinnamon
1/2 c dried fruit such as raisins, cherries or cranberries
1/2 c chopped nuts such as walnuts, pecans or almonds
1 apple or pear, peeled and cored and cut into bite size pieces

Bake the mixture, covered, for 30 minutes. Stir and serve. The oatmeal will still have some liquid to it but that will be absorbed as it cools.  Really tasty!

Oatmeal--Plain and Simple

By Kathyrn Washburn Breighner

I was in the cereal aisle of the grocery store--one of my rare dips away from the outside areas of the store that feature fresh foods--and I saw someone purusing the instant oatmeal packages. Now the good news is that this was a teacher and she was carefully reading the labels. Have you ever read the label of the instant oatmeals? Can you even pronounce what's in it? 

We grew up in a household san chemicals.  No preserved foods of any kind.  Other than an occasional Campbell's soup, there were no packaged potatoes, no jars of gravy or pasta sauce, no already prepared anything. Mom made it from scratch. Including oatmeal.

A favorite childhood food memory is camping with my Aunt Dottie and Uncle Gene. Gene rose early every a.m. and when cousin Susie and I returned from an early morning hike to some place where we probably shouldn't have been, there was a pot of thick, steel cut oats on the campstove. We topped it with brown sugar or maple syrup. A piece of heaven to start the day.

I begin most days with oatmeal. It's filling, great complex carbohydrates and fiber. And it tastes great! Lately, my morning begins with old fashioned oatmeal--rolled oats, no quick, no instant with chemicals.  I don't how long it takes to prepare the instant oatmeal in the package since I'd never buy it, so maybe 2 minutes?

Well, I make a bowl of old fashioned rolled oats in 5 minutes. And it tastes like real oatmeal! Easy: put 3/4 c of oatmeal in a bowl, add 1 1/4 c water, a dash of salt, and cinnamon or raisins or dried cranberries.  Microwave for 5 minutes at 60% power--so slower than as if you were were boiling water in the microwave  at full power.

For steel cut oats, I often do the cheat method: 1 c of steel cut oats, 4 c of water and a dash of salt and left on the stove--not cooked--over night. In the morning, I warm up the mixture, stirring, for about 10 minutes. This makes a large batch so the extra goes in the refridgerator and can be easily warmed in the microwave another day.