Oatmeal

I love oatmeal. especially the steel cut variety, because it doesn't get as mushy, and it's supposed to be healthier, which is a bonus.  I usually have it plain, or with cinnamon.  I never buy instant oatmeal, plain or flavoured, because it's so easy to flavour it with real ingredients at home, and instant doesn't have as much nutritional value.  It's another small step to cut out unnecessary additives.  Steel cut oatmeal takes a long way to cook, 20-30 minutes, but there is a short cut.  Soak it overnight in the pot you'll be using to boil it in the morning.  I usually use a 1:2 ratio of oatmeal to water.  By morning, all you need to do is heat it up, and it's good to go.  Who says you can't have healthy fast?

One of my fave flavours is to boil the oatmeal in plain water, just before it's done you can add a bit of milk, and keep it on the stove just until the milk heats up, so that you don't end up with cold oatmeal, then pour it in a bowl, add salted butter and maple syrup, or plain butter and salt with maple syrup.  It's a treat!  There are loads of flavour possibilities, but I love the salty and sweet, and butter just makes everything taste better.  As far as milk goes, you can use whatever milk you normally drink.  For the past 4 years I didn't drink cow's milk, only rice and almond.  Recently I discovered unhomogenized 3.8% whole organic milk from Organic Meadow.

http://organicmeadow.com/our_products/organic_milk/3_8_unhomogenized_whole_organic_milk

It tastes different from homogenized milk, and it looks different.  It forms a layer of thick cream at the top which I scoop up and eat, it's practically butter :)  It's very tasty, and from the readings I've done on line, unhomogenized milk is much healthier, because it retains more enzymes, which aid in digestion of milk.  Some sites referred to homogenized milk as carcinogenic.  Almost all cow's milk at supermarkets is homogenized.  Goat's milk, on the other hand, is never homogenized, and is quite popular all over the world, just not so much in N America.  Milk is a tricky subject, maybe I'll go into it more another time.