Last year I decided that we needed to wean ourselves off breakfast cereal, especially cornflakes, because the added sugar and salt plus lack of fiber is a terrible way to start the day. For a while I replaced the cereal with homemade muffins, but the baking is time-consuming, and anyway I make muffins loaded with butter. Then we tried health-food store granola, which was delicious and high in fiber, but still really loaded with fat and sugar.
This led me to oatmeal. This is far and away the best option: healthy and cheap, easily prepared. The only problem was that I hated it. I tried every trick in the book: I bought steel-cut oats, I loaded my bowl with maple syrup and nuts and dried cranberries. I ate it several times a week over the course of months, trying to retrain my palate. It still tasted like library paste, just with added crunch.
This week I had an epiphany. As a kid, I loved Coco Wheats. If you haven't experienced this miracle of manufacturing, Coco Wheats are simply Cream of Wheat cereal (For those not from the US - it's a semolina porridge) with added cocoa. I have no idea why my mother let me eat it, because once you dump on the requisite three or four teaspoons of sugar, you're basically looking at chocolate in a bowl. Anyhow, I decided to riff on that, and now I stir in a heaping tablespoon of Nutella into my oatmeal. Sure, it's not as healthy as plain oatmeal. But I'm eating it and I'm happy with my bowl of (pretty-good-for-me) chocolate sludge.
9 comments:
As I read the first part of your post I kept thinking "OATMEAL! Try oatmeal!".
I have oatmeal for breakfast almost every day. I still do the corn flakes every once in a while.
I don't like oatmeal with nuts and honey or sugar. What I do to make it better is add fresh fruit (banana, strawberry, mango, apple, pear) in small pieces, so that each spoonful has lots of bits of fruit.
This way my breakfast doesn't taste like paste. :)
Nutella gets used in the place of chocolate sauce when we have ice cream for dessert. I bought the Nutella to put on bagels but after I read the list of ingredients I decided that it was not a good idea. I just focus on the hazelnuts and skimmed milk and try to forget that sugar comes first in the list of ingredients.
I ate oatmeal for breakfast for about 6 years (1 year break in there while in Spain). Since then I have NO enthusiasm for it, alas.
I cannot eat warm cereal of any kind. no matter how healthy. It just squicks me out. I eat fruit with a liberal sprinkling of sugary granola.
Everything is better with Nutella! Good thought.
Bread, Cheese, Olives, Coffee (cured meat if you're not a vegetarian)
What a fabulous idea for the oatmeal-phobic! You could change things up a bit by adding cinnamon or other spices or mashed up bananas when you are sick of just plain old chocolate sludge (although how could ANYONE be sick of chocolatey sludgie goodness?).
Maybe the fiber-y goodness will somehow negate the trans-fat sugary goodness.
Funny how oatmeal is the only whole grain we think of eating for breakfast. You can make porridge with anything - millet, quinoa, sweet brown rice, barley, wheat berries, you name it. You can use one you love or you can make up a mix of several. You can cook up a big batch of the whole grains and eat it a few days in a row, or you can do what I do, which is give one portion a spin in the spice grinder (coffee grinder) until it's the texture of fine cornmeal. Then it cooks in five minutes and comes out sort of like cream of wheat, but more tasty & nutritionally superior. Sometimes I even include red lentils in the mix... they disappear in the grinding, & then I'm getting complete protein.
OooooOOOOH! I like the grinding of multiple grains idea! Thanks Rachel!
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