Savory Oatmeal

Just a friendly reminder that savory oatmeal is a thing (cheddar, thyme, roasted cherry tomatoes from the freezer), and is delicious. And you can #putaneggonit. Pictured here before hot sauce.

Oatmeal Sundays, part deux

Yes. These two pictures look exactly the same. But they're not the same bowl, I swear!



The top photo is Scottish Oatmeal: 2 cups water, 1 cup milk, bring to a boil, stir in a cup of Scottish oats, simmer until cooked, 10ish minutes. Meh. It was ok. The texture was much better than just previous attempts, creamy but with a little chew. I added brown sugar and blueberries.

The second photo (which, ok, technically we ate the Sunday BEFORE the first one) is April Bloomfield's Porridge, and I actually really liked it! The texture was great, no gluey-ness at all. We followed Luisa's instructions to use less salt - we used 3/4 tsp of Maldon salt, which is hugely flakey and thus less salty when measured by volume than kosher. If you try it and want to use kosher, start with a scant 1/2 teaspoon (or less) and work up from there. This stuff is SALTY. I liked it, but I can see how it would be too salty for some. I added brown sugar and blueberries, because that's what we had. I'd like to play around with this one and try using a little more water and a little less milk, or try using almond milk instead (we usually have that in the house and don't always have cow's milk) and I'll also try a double batch next to see how the leftovers hold up.

We took a little break from oats this past Sunday to eat eggs and toast and Adam's famous breakfast potatoes, but there are a couple other oatmeal preparations to try, and I'll report back on those, of course. Happy breakfasting, everyone.

Oatmeal Sundays

I have a confession to make: I don't like oatmeal. I find this to be a confounding thing, as I like porridge-y things made from so many other grains! I love risotto and congee made from rice, I devour polenta and grits made from corn, I am well and truly obsessed with the cream of wheat at The Neighborhood restaurant in Somerville, MA (I'm pretty sure they put sweetened condensed milk in it, to be honest). But other than choking down the occasional packet of instant quaker during my corporate office days, oatmeal hasn't even really make it onto my radar until now.

Oh wait, that was a misleading paragraph. I am not about to tell you that I now like oatmeal, or about a recipe that converted me. Sorry. Instead, let me tell you about my project to learn to like oatmeal. They say it can be done, and since I don't find it actually, like, offensive, just kind of... gluey? Anyway, I think it's a matter of finding the right preparation, and I'd like to get into a routine of eating oatmeal on the regular, because, frankly, it's apparently very good for lactation, and, oh yeah, it's all over my other social media, but have I mentioned on this blog that Adam and I are expecting a baby in June? We are. Yay!

So we've instituted Oatmeal Sundays at our house, and I've got five more months to figure out how to eat oatmeal and not be grumpy about it. Up top you can see an attempt at baked oatmeal. Specifically, Heidi Swanson's baked oatmeal from Super Natural Every Day. It has you slice some bananas for the bottom of the dish, then a layer of berries, a layer of oats + stuff, then more berries, and then you pour a milk/egg combo over the top and bake. It's January, so instead of berries I used jam, and I just left out the sugar in the oat mixture. I thought it was just fine, but it took approximately forever in the oven, and I underbaked it, I think, because I was so hungry I just needed to eat breakfast NOW. The edges were juuust starting to get golden, so the middle, while cooked all the way through, was that sort of weird in between gluey texture that I don't really like. If I had left it in long enough I think it would have had a nicer, chunkier texture. I'll try it again, but not right away.



Next we tried overnight steel cut oats in the slow cooker. I didn't follow a particular recipe, but my friend Cara said 4 cups liquid to 1 cup oats and I just ran with it from there. I used a cup of Bob's Redmill Steel Cut Oats, two cups of milk and two cups of water, a big pinch of salt, a couple tablespoons of brown sugar and two small handfuls of raisins. All mixed together in the slow cooker at 10pm, ready to eat when we got up at 8am. Apparently last time I bought raisins I bought a bag of JUMBO raisins but I think in the future I wouldn't put the fruit in the night before. They got a little too plump, and it was weird. They tasted kind of wine-y. The texture of the oats was actually pretty good, much smoother than I anticipated. I think this would make a good base for toppings added in the morning (oh and I did add a little maple syrup for serving). We'll try these again for sure, if nothing else for efficiency's sake. If these come out the winner, I might get a smaller crock pot, the one I have felt much too big for this. I also realized too late that I had put the raisins in thinking I'd add peanut butter in the morning, which MANY people suggested, for like a PB&J type thing, but then I forgot. It was morning, after all.

The rest of the candidates:
April Bloomfield's Porridge, which gets rave reviews from a bunch of bloggers I trust and is apparently quite salty, which I love.
Megan Gordon's steel cut oats from Whole Grain Mornings - maybe toasting the oats in butter before simmering them is the key to my happiness? Also, note to husbands and other gift-buyers: I want this book reeeeal bad.
My friend Tiffany suggested Scottish Oats which sounds very appealing and more porridge-y than the other types, but it's just a matter of tracking down the oats. There are several hippie-marts near me that carry lots of Bob's Red Mill products so I'll try to find them locally before I order them online. (A five pound bag?! Come on, Bob.) (Ok, apparently smaller bags are available, but Amazon only has them in packages of 4 smaller bags, which add up to... 5 lbs. Oy.)
And finally, another baked oatmeal contender from Joy the Baker, which a friend suggested via Pinterest (PS, I'm on Pinterest now, apparently. How'd that happen?)

So, folks, if you have any other suggestions for oatmeal preparations or recipes, or just want to commiserate about trying to teach yourself to like something that's so darn good for you, please speak up.

Oatmeal Jam Bars

I recently did a little kitchen cabinet inventory and discovered that I may have been a little jam-crazy last summer. I still have five jars of tomato jam, nine (nine!) jars of jalapeno jelly, a few apricot rosemary, four sour cherry (hooray, my favorite!), a rhubarb, a peach, and a few plums. Canning season is just getting underway (I've already pickled some asparagus), and I need to make some space in the cupboard. So I polled twitter about what to do with all that fruity goodness. SO MANY GOOD IDEAS. Cakes and tarts and cookies, oh my! Roving Lemon passed along this recipe, originally from The Pioneer Woman, and since it was the simplest thing I had all the ingredients for, I made them to take to a party last week. They were a hit! Oh, and Adam is looking over my shoulder and suggests that you cut them into 16 smaller bars rather than 12.

Oatmeal Jam Bars
makes 12-16 bars depending on how you cut them
adapted, but not much, from The Pioneer Woman

I used plum jam, but I think the beauty here is that you can use whatever you want or have extra of - strawberry jam this month, peach in July, apple butter in September, woo!

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1 cup brown sugar (light or dark)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp kosher salt (use 1/2 tsp if using fine sea salt or table salt)
14 tablespoons (1 3/4 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
10-12 ounces jam (I used one full 1/2 pint and a few spoonfuls from another 1/2 pint)

Preheat oven to 350F.

Mix together the flour, oats, brown sugar, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl, then use your fingers to smush the soft butter in. Cut a strip of parchment paper and use it to line the bottom and two sides of an 8x8 baking pan. Spray the pan with non stick spray.

Put half the oat mixture in the pan and use your hands or a spatula to press it firmly in an even layer. Spread the jam over the oats, then sprinkle the other half of the oats over the jam and use your hands to press it into an even layer. No need to pack quite as firmly here, you don't want to smush the jam to the bottom.

Bake for 30-40 minutes, rotating halfway through, until the top is light golden brown. Let cool in the pan, then use the parchment sling to lift the bars out of the pan (you may need to run a thin knife around the edge). Cut the bars into squares.