I woke up to a lovely vision this morning…
Hot coffee in the coffee pot and hot oatmeal in the slow cooker.
Hubby’s been doing a great job setting this up every night. Nothing like having coffee waiting for you!
Today we tried the new fall flavor I picked up recently – Pumpkin Spice from The Fresh Market!! Yuuuummmm!
Oatmeal waiting for me was killer! 🙂
I used Alton Brown’s recipe as a guideline, but got paranoid about burnt oatmeal after reading all the reviews, so I switched up the cooking method.
Here’s what I did for my Slow Cooker Oatmeal:
- Mixed up 1 cup steel cut oats with 4 cups water and 1/2 cup 1% organic milk in the slow cooker.
- Cooked the mixture over Warm for 8 hours.
- After waking up, I turned the slow cooker to hight for 30 minutes.
- I served myself a bowl and moved the rest to individual containers to cool and store in the fridge and freezer
Notes:
- I didn’t add any fruit or sweeteners because I knew I’d make several portions for later and I want to pick my mixins later.
- I’d like to try adding mixins like dried fruit, chia seeds, etc. to the original batch in the future to see how it turns out.
- Many reviews said the Low temp (which is what you’re supposed to use according to Alton’s recipe) resulted in burned oats. I think I’m going to experiment cooking mine on Low but during the day so I can stop them before they’re burning. The 8 hours on Warm with 30 minutes on High trick seemed to work well enough for today.
- Please don’t use rolled oats – they’re totally not going to work with this cooking method (at least that’s what all the reviews on Alton’s recipe said…but it seems to make logical sense).
- I think this dish would be fabulous for a brunch party.
- Random Thought – I’d really like to bring some of these to work some time…maybe some new people would find out they really like oatmeal?
I made another mini me bowl of oats for hubby today.
I mixed in a sliced banana, plus flaxseed meal, chia seed, sliced almonds, with a couple cranberries on top.
The mixins were strange today because I mixed them in post-cooking. When I re-heat the rest of the oats, I plan to do so stovetop, which will make it much easier to incorporate mixins. At least that’s what I’m expecting. 🙂
My kitchen felt like an oatmeal factory today! Look at all the servings I have for later! These are each about 2/3 – 3/4 cup servings.
***
If you guessed my errand today was going to the DMV, you were right!
I tried going to the DMV. I mean…I actually went, but when I got in line behind about 40 people, I knew it would be bad. When someone said it would be 3 hours from where we were in line, I decided to leave. Guess I’ll try again next week.
I had a second breakfast later – another delicious rye bagel. Hubby and I may or may not be slightly obsessed with these.
Bailey is so funny. Look at how he gets all comfy on our pillows! 😆
Tulsi tea with honey.
Hubby picked up some dry cleaning for us today. They charged us $15-17 per dress!!!! I don’t do dry cleaning much, but that seems astronomical! Is this normal??
Lunch #1 was ED&BV lentil soup plus some fresh-baked Whole Grain Goodness with a dab of real butter.
Lunch #2 = steamed broccoli with butter and nutritional yeast.
I also had more of that healthy “Lucky Charms” cereal… eaten with a new spoon! Picked this up at a recent garage sale.
And about 2 hours before teaching zumba, I had a smoothie for a pre-workout snack. I normally aim for 1 hour before a workout for pre-workout snacks seem to take me longer to digest.
In the mix:
- frozen mixed organic berries
- banana
- Vanilla rice milk
- Vega Whole Health Optimizer
***
Post work, I taught Zumba tonight! We had a fabulous class with lots of hard songs. I’m trying to make my playlists pretty challenging so people get a really good workout. 🙂
Post-zumba I met up with some friends at Yoforia. I just went for the company, though…I didn’t actually eat any froyo! I really wanted dinner first. Can you believe I went to a froyo shop and didn’t get anything?! lol
I had no clue what to eat for dinner, though I did know we didn’t really have much at home. So, I hit up Jason’s. I kind of wanted a turkey wrap, but I ended up getting a turkey melt.
Mostly I picked the melt because I heard sauerkraut is good for you. It seemed like a logical decision…but it tasted…off tonight? Guess I should have listened to my gut. Oh well!
More cereal for me tonight! Nom nom nom!
Ready to try oats in your slow cooker? What’s your favorite thing to cook in a recipe? Please comment with recipes if you have them. 🙂
What a great idea to cook the oats in your slow cooker!!
I LOVE the idea of making steel cut oats in a slow cooker, do you think I can try to make them in my rice cooker?
My favorite thing to cook, well bake, is a good ol’ pie. I love all the different aspects of pie making, from making the crust to the filling :-).
Here’s my pie crust recipe:
http://teatimewithlin.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/recipe-perfect-vegan-pie-crust/
I bet a rice cooker would work too! I’ve cooked oat groats in mine before and they turned out lovely.
Thanks for the pie crust recipe link! 🙂
Cereal is the best late night dinner in my opinion!
Great idea to cook it on the warm setting, I’ll have to give that a try. I’ve made it a couple of times on low and it has just been nasty. Half burnt and half uncooked.
that’s what i was afraid of!
Just in case its helpful, I thought I’d let you know that you can actually make an appointment at the DMV. You just call and schedule, and then when you get there, you bypass the line. You go up to the desk and say you have an appointment and go directly into the seating area.
I used to wait in line too, and when I found out, I was amazed that everyone didn’t just make an appointment — but it seems like nobody knows you can (even though there are signs at the DMV if you look close)!
I tried, but they didn’t have appointments available until October – December! 🙁 Thanks for the tip though!
Love the slow cooked oats idea and bringing them to work. I think more people need to be turned on to the wonderful aspects of oatmeal other than the instant packets.
Sounds like a great night darling!
Totally agree! 🙂
What brand is those lucky charms? I want to try them 😉
It’s called “Three Sisters” and they have it at Whole Foods. 🙂
I think the warm setting and steel cut oats are the key. I used low setting and rolled outs and that’s why they burned. I just don’t have a warm setting on my slow cooker. 🙁
Plus rolled oats have such a shorter cooking time than steel cut. They may not be robust enough for the slow cooker. 🙁
Love the idea for oats in the slow cooker! I need to try that out. 🙂
I tried Alton’s slow cooker steel-cut oats a while back (maybe a year or so ago?) and thought they were great in terms of convenience, but I wasn’t a huge fan of how the super long, slow cooking affected the texture of the oats. One of the reason I love steel-cut oats is their chewy texture, but I thought they got too soft in the slow cooker! I didn’t mind the burnt bottom, either, I just stirred it in. One thing I did love about it was having freshly cooked, hot oats waiting for me when I woke up in the morning. That was a treat!
I recently tried making steel-cut oats in my rice cooker, and that was magic! I think that’ll be my go-to appliance for steel-cut oats.
Great tip! Thanks for sharing! I do love cooking things in the rice cooker. 🙂
Oooo…if you have a rice cooker, you definitely ought to try the last recipe in this article: http://www.austin360.com/food-drink/dining-at-home/roger-eberts-rice-cooker-magic-876639.html?viewAsSinglePage=true
Garlic Chicken on Fragrant Rice is delicious!
I just noticed the quote/question at the very bottom of the page 🙂 I love it!
If I knew I could not fail, I would definitely try to run a half marathon, specifically the Disney Princess one.
Thanks Megan!
I think you can do it! 🙂
I don’t wear many dresses so can’t speak to dry cleaning prices for them. But, what fires me up is that dry cleaners charge WAY more for ladies button down shirt than they do for mens. It doesn’t seem fair.
Totally unfair! Ours are usually smaller, so you think they’d be less!
I buy Brooks Brothers non-irons so I don’t have to get them dry cleaned. 🙂
I saw your dry cleaning receipt and felt a flash of horrible recognition. I took two linen dresses and two silk tops to a fancy new dry cleaner that just opened up around the corner from me a few months ago (so convenient!) and they handed me a bill for $48.00. 😐 I almost cried.
So yes, its too much. Especially painful because the dresses were thrifted…I paid more to clean them then I bought them for. I shake my fist at you dry cleaner people!!
I’m thinking of trying the Dryel system to freshen up clothes that aren’t actually stained or in need of serious cleaning…anyone else have any experience with it?
I’ve used Dryel before and been happy with it. I think there are some things the dry cleaners are probably better with – esp if you need mending or stains removed, etc.
I think I’ll use your recipe next week — on Tues mornings we have a work meeting and someone brings breakfast (almost always bagels or donuts…) and I thought crockpot oats would be perfect.
I’ve never had anything drycleaned — so I have no clue!
You could probably also cook the oats stove top or in a rice cooker and use your slow cooker to keep them warm. 🙂
I usually get charged around $10 for a dress at the cleaners! Most places charge more for women’s tailored shirts than men’s and it makes me mad! I try to buy shirts that don’t need ironing/special care and my bf can get shirts cleaned all the time for nothing!
yea, seems so unfair!
I burnt my oats when using Alton’s recipe!! However, that’s the only fault I’ve found in him or his recipes, so it let’s me know he’s human 😉 I think I’ll try your tweaks next time, because I love the idea of oats in the slow cooker!
YOu can try a rice cooker too 🙂
Diana– the oatmeal is such a good idea! I do a ton of meetings here at school– I would love to bring in “Make Your Own” oatmeal. Like an ice cream bar but with oatmeal!
Thanks for the tips about using the warm setting, too. My slow cooker cooks pretty fast, so mine would have definitely burned on low!
dry cleaners are so ridiculously expensive! i have 2 horror stories. well, maybe not HORROR stories but i was quite upset. the first one is that i took a pair of dress pants to the dry cleaner about a month before i moved away from a town, picked them up and never wore them again until after i moved… only to discover that the hem was ripped. i suppose i could have done it but it was still in the plastic bag! grrr! and then, in my new town, i have gloves that are dry clean only & the dry cleaner won’t take them because they’re too small! soooo how can i clean them?!? grr! haha it’s kinda funny now but still upsetting 🙂
sorry to hear your stories hun! 🙁
Ugh… worst posture ever in that picture!!! LOL!