Kakahead

So… there I was, 10,000 feet in the air, no plane, no parachute, minding my own business, when a friend at work asked me, “can I get the recipe for your oats thing?  I had it in the message you sent me but I lost it.”  OK maybe I wasn’t up in the air with no plane or parachute… but she really did ask me for the recipe.

Call me silly but when my doctor told me to lower my cholesterol a few years ago, I wanted medication to be the last resort.  I figured that since my lovely girlfriend and I know how to eat a pretty healthy diet, I should be able to put some of that long learned diet knowledge to work.  So I switched my breakfasts at work to healthier fare.  I had only two requirements:  1)  it needed to be something that would be at least cholesterol neutral (not increase it), and J) it simply had to taste good.

I knew that fancy processed breakfast bars were a bit too pricey to eat on a regular basis.  Besides, with all that packaging and weird ingredients they can tout “good health” all they want.  The makers of so-called healthy breakfast bars have only one thing in mind:  getting my money.   We hear that oats reduce cholesterol, but after many years of that sticky glop when I was a kid, I’ve promised myself never to eat cooked oatmeal again.  At least, not as a breakfast cereal.  Oatmeal cookies, rhubarb oat crumble… stuff like that is a different story.  I experimented with putting oats into my diet by just having some home made “granola,”  oats, raisins, walnuts and some honey in a bowl with milk.  Not too bad, but a bit too chewy.

Then I had a thought.  I jumped up on top of the stove, pointed my finger skyward, and shouted, “EUREKA!!”  No one was home at the time so the gesture was a bit anticlimactic.   Oh OK maybe I didn’t do that at all.  But I did have a thought.  Maybe if I let the oats soak overnight in some milk… and YES!!  They are not mooshy but not difficult to chew.  Very tasty.  Added some other goodies and I now have it for breakfast on a regular basis.  I borrowed one of Dr. Seuss’s terms for the stuff… although it had a rather negative connotation in his book The Lorax.   So, without further ado, here’s my recipe for:

Gluppity Glup:

1/2 cup uncooked thick rolled oats

1/2 cup fat free yogurt

The rest I don’t measure:

approx. 1 tbsp honey  (maybe a little more… I like it a tiny bit sweet)

handful of blueberries (any fruit is fine… sometimes I use raisins or cut up strawberries)

handful of walnuts (approx. 1 oz)

approx. 1/2 cup fat free milk (maybe more)

Instructions:

Put all the ingredients in a 16 oz. glass jar (I use a Meijer Naturals Peanut Butter jar ) (oh and yes it’s empty when I start…) and fill the balance with milk.

I usually put the oats in first, then the yogurt, honey, berries, and walnuts.

Then I add the milk, sometimes I need to take a butter knife and “drill” through the yogurt so the milk makes the oats moist.

Fill the rest of the way with milk, put the cap on and shake to mix.

Variations depending on container are obvious… but there’s the gist of it.

I make this before I go to bed and put it in the fridge… oats are ready to eat by morning.

I have a morning ritual of stuffing my face and reading e-mails, etc. before zooming out into the plant to go fix things.  I find that a breakfast like this keeps me satisfied well through the morning.  Hope you get a chance to try it some time.

Now those of you who follow this know that I like to post a video at the end of each “Happy Friday!!!”   I try to find something that ties in with the subject matter, and when I go video hunting I find some interesting stuff.  Never would have dreamed to find this “commercial” from 1939…