I've Paula Deen-ed the Oatmeal

You know how some dieticians say that you've gotta eat within 30 minutes of waking to get ye olde metabolism going?  Dieticians must never have met a mommy schedule.  I eat breakfast when M goes down for his morning nap.  And by then, I'm ravenous.  So what's a breastfeeding mommy to do? 

Well, I decided that for my health and possibly milk production, to incorporate a bowl of oatmeal into my daily diet.  While all evidence that oatmeal is a galactogogue is circumstantial, at the very worst, my colon will thank me.  What wasn't going to thank me was my taste buds.  Oatmeal isn't exactly a bowl of chocolate puffs soaked in chocolate milk sprinkled with chocolate shavings eaten with a chocolate spoon.  So I went about looking for recipes that would make daily servings of oatmeal more palatable without adding too much unhealthy stuff.

And, to warn you, I've only tried two.  Because I was happy with the second one. 

The first was Alton Brown's Overnight Crock Pot Oatmeal.  I got all the ingredients from Trader Joe's (steel cut oats, dried fruit, half and half).  I busted out our neglected slow cooker and poured it all in.  Left overnight, it made the house smell delicious if a bit burnt.  Our slow cooker is apparently a little more powerful than average since it kind of caramelized to the point of blackness the sugars from the dried fruits.  Still pretty tasty, though.  And since it was a slow cooker recipe, very little work.  But something in me didn't find this fruity oatmeal to be something I could eat on a daily basis.

And then I came across this simpler (in terms of flavor) oatmeal recipe at notmartha.  It calls for toasting and BUTTERING the steel cut oats before boiling it in water and milk.  The nutty flavor from toasting the oatmeal in BUTTAH really makes it, too.  The fact that there's no berry flavoring built in like the previous recipe means I get to add what I want on the days that I want it.  I double the recipe from Orangette and keep it in the fridge for heating.  Doubling the recipe means I have about 3-4 days worth of oatmeal that I can quickly nuke and eat.  Perfect for my ravenous breastfeeding appetite.