Delicious Easy Hot Oatmeal with an incredible Aroma!

We love Quaker's Old Fashioned Oatmeal. Mine soaking in a pot as I write this. Since I tend to have a lot of dental work, I have been looking at what best to eat? What I eat got my attention per my check-up last year, and breaking the back of a tooth down to the bone about two weeks ago.

I was never crazy about hot oatmeal, but love it now per the way I make it. My husband loves it now too. He used to be a cold cereal eater -- those boxes are standing around, while I buy huge boxes of oatmeal and my blood work has never been better.

I cut a small banana, a fresh apple into thin small slices, dried cranberries, or whatever fruit is in the house and add it to my "Old Fashioned" Quaker Oats in a saucepan. I cover it with about 50/50 water and Blue Diamond Almond Milk as we need the calcium (twice the calcium in cow's milk). You can make it with all water or all milk of any kind too. The dried cranberries will become soft.

I let it sit for awhile together, covered in liquid, and will then cook it slowly. Sometimes I stop as tend to burn meals when I blog. Here is what it looks like so far. You can see the oatmeal underneath and banana, apple, and dried cranberries. Sometimes I only use banana, other times only apple or dried cranberries, but am doing all today and it will be delicious!



Here, I am covering it with 50/50 Almond Milk (the one with 30 calories in a glass) and water, or one can use any combination, just cover it -- does not matter if a little more liquid as it will get cooked into the oatmeal shortly.



Now I will cook it and come back to finish the blog!

It smells heavenly when the banana cooks in the oatmeal, the fresh apple is soft and the cranberries plump-up -- can you see?



Oatmeal finished -- soft enough for me but it could be cooked longer -- the apple is very soft and the the banana gives it the most heavenly aroma. Sometimes I put ground flax seed on top -- as it is very reasonable at COSTCO. The only way my husband will eat ground flax is on top of his oatmeal. I sneak it in lots of things when he is not looking! We lean to vegetarian so have to get plant sources for our Omega-3. Do not buy un-ground flax seed as humans can not digest the tiny seeds. If you come up with a recipe, please post, or you can sign up with your email to get the blog each time I update. If you prefer Kindle format, it is available at http://amzn.to/1zFZ4kr for 99 cents per month (Amazon set the price).



It holds up well in the refrigerator if you can not eat it all and my husband will microwave it when he is in the mood --- "Oatmeal is not just for breakfast anymore, as it is a great snack."

And as my great-niece would sing to the tune of 3 blind mice:
"Hot Oatmeal, hot oatmeal, yummy, yummy, in my tummy, hot oatmeal."

More Thanksgiving 2014

The top photo is my dinner plate for today. I have a temporary crown in a premolar as the back of the tooth broke down to the bone. I planned on making only soft foods today for Thanksgiving. I did not make my usual fresh cranberry-orange relish, fresh cranberries remain in the freezer. The stuffing is not our usual crispy crust type, but as soft and flavorful as possible. The turkey tenders are just that, very tender turkey, no need to cut with a fork.

Our appetizer today was tomato soup. My Mom made the best-in-the-world tomato soup from tomatoes from her garden and mine. I can not reproduce her soup, although I saw her work on removing the skin and seeds from the tomatoes with a piece of equipment I inherited. It does not look like fun to me. She would carefully place each bit of tomato puree in a plastic bag and freeze it very flat, so that she could fit many into her freezer space in her refrigerator. Thanksgiving was my Mom's favorite, the holiday we would also spend with cousins and I miss that very much.

While my apples are sweating, keeping them around 140F or below in a Dutch oven, softening them up before placing in a new, homemade pie crust. The pie crust I am trying today, replaces 1/2 of the water with 80 proof Vodka, to see if I can stop the gluten from forming. If I ever needed soft everything, this is the year. Should it be good, the recipe will end up in one of my upcoming cookbooks, but no fear, if really good, I will post to this blog.

I am not using expensive Vodka in the pie crust like Grey Goose, but Smirnoff, which was less than half the price. I hope the Vodka does not leave a flavor in the pie crust? Guess it is bye until the pie is finished as they say . . .

"Time to bake the donuts."