Someone mentioned firsts

[redbird]

When adrian_turtle offered me oatmeal for breakfast, I admitted to having never tried it, but being curious. Offered a choice of steel-cut or rolled oats, I had no preference, so we tossed a coin. Steel-cut (a.k.a. pinhead) oatmeal for breakfast Saturday morning, with maple syrup and dried cherries. I liked it.

Sunday morning, we had the rolled oats, for comparison purposes, with maple syrup and raisins. I concluded that I prefer the steel-cut, so this morning we had steel-cut oats with maple syrup and dried blueberries. Had I stayed much longer, Adrian would have run out of maple syrup.

It'll be back to yogurt tomorrow morning--part of the point of the yogurt-every-morning approach is that it's minimal work--but I expect to be buying some oats, and maybe some dried blueberries.

Comments

[rosefox]

Ah, thanks for the reminder! *adds maple syrup to shopping list*

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

Heh, I was just playing the Moxy Fruvous version of "Maple Syrup Time" for the second time today -- it's a big favorite of my 10-year-old.

[carandol.livejournal.com]

Is "oatmeal" the same as we'd call porridge? Oats boiled up with milk and/or water, to a thick, gloopy consistency?

Anyway, oats are supposed to be a great food for keeping you going, cos they release sugars into your body slowly. Recent tests on schoolkids in England showed that those who had oats for breakfast, as opposed to cornflakes or the like, were a lot less likely to want a snack partway through the morning.

This makes them very good for diabetics too!

[redbird]

Yes, it's porridge. But we call oat porridge oatmeal, and I have also eaten and enjoyed a wild rice porridge (I posted about that, and inspired Adrian to make some, though not while I was there) and the rice porridge the Chinese call jook or congee.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

"Porridge" is a more general term, here. It's sort of a technical cooking term, and hardly anyone uses it here in conversation, but most people recognize it as the general category including oatmeal, cream-of-wheat, cornmeal mush, and other kinds of hot cereal. (Cornmeal mush is a kind of porridge, traditional in the southern US. Polenta is sophisticated foreign food. *grin* It's all a difference of attitude and seasonings.)

The steel-cut oats are just milled oats, they look kind of like pearled barley. Rolled oats have the grains steamed open and then rolled flat, so they cook faster and have a different texture. (Rolled oats are what goes in oatmeal cookies, generally.) Quick oats are rolled oats that have been cut into smaller pieces, for even faster cooking. And baby cereal or instant oatmeal takes rolled oats and grinds them to dust. I don't know how much this kind of pre-processing speeds up the digestive process and makes grains worse for diabetics. I've heard conflicting reports, and there will probably be more research done in the next 10 years or so.

You can combine them..

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

Yogurt and bircher-muesli, and you don't even have to cook. OK, so it's health food... ;-)

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

I'm sort of amazed that someone had never eaten oatmeal. I've eaten it all my life so it just seems -- odd. No reason you should have really though. I like it with raisins and brown sugar. Maybe cinnamon.

MKK

[elissaann.livejournal.com]

Embrace the power of "and".

One of my power breakfasts is to throw uncooked oatmeal into yoghurt. Sweetener (maple syrup or honey) is optional. The oatmeal softens a little bit after a couple of minutes, and the texture and combination of tastes works well for me.