Oatmeal, it's what's for breakfast

A Year from Now, you may wish

 You had started Today

-Karen Lamb

One of my worst habits is skipping breakfast.  I don’t know when that particular habit started. I can place several of my missteps in the path of a healthy life.  For example coffee, my obsession with coffee didn’t start until I was in my twenties.  My guess is breakfast became a problem for me in High School.  I could always sleep 30 minutes later if I didn’t have to think about breakfast.  Some of you are like what about your parents.  My mother worked at night.  My father was my dad.  I think he figured I was old enough.  I was a teenager after all, how hard is it to fill a bowl of cereal with milk and eat.  So even though breakfast food was available I didn’t partake of it.  I don’t recall if free breakfast was part of NYC school system for High School students in the 1990’s.  I know it was there for middle and elementary kids.  I know I was already living with the misconception that I was a fat girl barely looking like a human.  The passions of youth can sometimes be an awful thing. It didn’t matter if my parents or someone else told me anything different than what I perceived.  My first meal of the day for to many days in high school was a half pint white milk.  I imposed that crap on myself.  I didn’t have to prove myself to anyone. I was a nerd already interested in writing and humanities. 

In the previous posts, I have mentioned oatmeal.  I don’t the tone I used could be viewed as

positive.  I think it had a resigned feel to it.  I wondered about that.  I don’t have a good or bad feeling about oatmeal.  Breakfast meals in general are meh for me.  In the last 2 weeks I have only eaten eggs once and I have only drunk milk in my coffee. I wince when I think of cold cereal and that is another lost feeling. I used to love cold cereal.  What happened to me?  I guess that is another post to explore relationships with food.  When analyzed I noticed mixed feeling about the whole things.  This will take so much time.  I hope I can do it justice. 

Oatmeal is a great whole grain, there are many health benefits to add it to your diet.  Every time that word is typed I fight the urge to explain further.  If anyone is confused when I use that word.  Leave a comment.  I will explain. Back to oatmeal which is low calorie and low in fat, high in fiber and protein.  It also removes bad cholesterol, stabilizes blood sugar, protects again heart disease, heart failure cancer and reduces risk of diabetes. It enhances immunity and full of antioxidants and of course it is gluten free. 

Thank you care2.com for easy to read facts. 

Some of you may think that oatmeal is the same where ever you go.  Health and well-being nuts and those of us who are new converts to the health and wellness path know that there are two kind of oats used in hot cereal.  I am sure are most likely more kinds of oats but I am only working with the two that have been most popular.  Which is steel cut aka Irish oats and rolled oats, what I used to just call Quakers. There might be a little competition on which is better.  According to Prevention.com, the differences are negligible.  ¼ cup of dry Steel cut oats is 20 calories less than ¼ cup of rolled oats.  Steel cut has no sugar and rolled has only 1g. Both are of course gluten free.  The difference is the processing rolled oat has a longer method than steel cut.  I do know that steel cut takes a little longer to cook.  So weigh that against the choice you to make. 

In the meantime here are two odd and two even oatmeal suggestions made by Real simple magazine, pictures were elegantly taken by Danny Kim.  I will be trying each  one I featured here and give the results over the next couple of weeks.  I will try to also ascertain if the health bennies are enhanced or diminished.  

Odd

Oatmeal cheddar cheese and scallions 

Oatmeal bacon and maple syrup 

in my case it will be 2 strip of turkey bacon 

  

Even

Oatmeal with banana and molasses

Oatmeal with dried fruit and pistachios

This one is a little more traditional