Author: Mary Anne

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Oatmeal Experiments Continue

This morning, I tried cooking in dried fruit (diced peaches, cranberries, apricots, pears, nectarines, and raisins) directly with the steel-cut oatmeal; that worked, with the fruit nice and soft by the time the oatmeal was cooked. (Link to mixed dried fruit in comments.)

Stirred in chia seeds and fresh blueberries at the end — the end result was plenty sweet for me without adding any brown sugar or honey, and the blueberries were a bit tangy, adding a nice fresh contrast.

I didn’t feel like nuts or nut butter or bananas this morning, and this oatmeal was fine, but did feel a little less substantial than my other oatmeal breakfasts. Maybe I’ll eat a banana later today. 🙂

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A Lot of Chew

Today’s oatmeal: steel-cut oats, unsweetened cashew butter (which it turns out I like much better than peanut butter, link in comments), unsweetened cacao nibs (for that bit of chocolate), sprinkle of jaggery, banana. Very good!

Jed tried a bite of it, and for him, he’d like the oatmeal softer, but I like it right at 20 minutes simmering, with a lot of chew. 🙂

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Steel-Cut Oatmeal

Today’s oatmeal, steel-cut (better texture for me, plus added fiber), with apples sautéed in butter, shredded cheddar, and chia seeds.

Not sure it counts as a lowering-cholesterol kind of meal, given the whole milk, butter, and cheese. 🙂 But tasty! And a nice balance of savory (salted oatmeal & cheese) and sweet (from the apples).

Very nice to have 20 minutes in the morning to cook this kind of breakfast. But I do want to try making steel-cut oats in the microwave; it’s supposed to only take 10 minutes. We’ll see…

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A Successful Oatmeal Experiment

Well, today’s oatmeal experiment was less successful. You warned me, but now I have empirical evidence that I do not like making steel-cut oats in the microwave. I will not be trying that again. (I will probably try the overnight method at some point, but the problem is that I don’t necessarily know the night before whether I’ll want oatmeal in the morning.)

Even though I was just making 1/4 c. of oats and I put it in a large covered 4 c. glass measuring dish, that wasn’t large enough to keep it from foaming over anyway, which made an extra mess to clean up, bah.

AND, less of the liquid cooked off, so while the oats were cooked in 10 minutes, they were swimming in more liquid that I would want. Much prefer stovetop method, where the liquid simmers down and concentrates to more of a porridge-y thing.

On the other hand, I tried a different chocolate-nut butter, and I think it’s a better option for me (I’m pre-diabetic, and had gestational diabetes with Anand, so I try to watch my sugars).

Justin’s Chocolate & Almond Butter isn’t as sweet as Nutella, nor as silky, so if you’re going for that dessert-y feel, you may be disappointed. And it does have a little more fat & a fair bit more sodium than Nutella, so if you’re trying to limit those, you may not want to switch.

But Justin’s has half the sugar / carbohydrates of Nutella, which is better for me. I also appreciate that the first ingredients listed (the ingredients it has the most of) are hazelnuts and almonds, where Nutella’s first ingredients are sugar and palm oil.

Justin’s is quite nice swirled in with oatmeal, banana, and a sprinkle of chia seeds, and I like it straight off the spoon too — that bit of extra salt is a nice contrast with the nutty sweet.

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Sri Lankan Instead

A friend came by for lunch yesterday; we had talked about getting Indian takeout, but I’m trying to eat a little healthier, and I had time, so I ended up cooking Sri Lankan instead.

(Not to claim Sri Lankan is inherently healthier than Indian, just that my cooking is usually healthier than restaurant takeout.)

I’m trying to amp up the health aspects of some of my meals:

• I tried adding sweet potatoes to the chicken curry (good, but got a little overcooked, should have added them later in the process)

• did half-and-half basmati and Sri Lankan red rice (lower glycemic index than white rice, doesn’t take any longer to cook, adds a subtle nutty flavor)

• served with cabbage mallung, which is already pretty darn healthy (cabbage, onions, coconut, green chili, just a touch of veg. oil)

Tasty meal. 🙂

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Oatmeal Options

This morning’s oatmeal — my doc says I need to lower my cholesterol a tiny bit, so I’m experimenting with oatmeal options. I had a banana that was on its last day, so oatmeal + banana + a heaping teaspoon of Nutella. Yum.

It looks a little ooky when you mix it all together, but it tastes delicious. I offered Anand a spoon of it to try, and he tried to take my bowl away. I made him make his own. 🙂

I don’t really love sweet breakfasts, so savory oatmeal experiments may be coming soon.

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Oatmeal and Knitting

Autumn mornings — oatmeal and knitting. 🙂 Between start of semester, ChiCon, eldercare, and catching a bad cold, I haven’t had time or energy for knitting in a while, especially something that takes as much concentration as this pattern. Nice to come back to it. Breathing in that crisp fall air…

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Fritzi’s Delicatessen

I stopped in at new Fritzi’s Delicatessen on Oak Park Ave., and asked the nice young person behind the counter to recommend some things. I tried everything he recommended:

• whitefish w / bagel
• pastrami sandwich on challah
• matzoh ball soup
• beef short ribs braised in pomegranate sauce

And also:

• potato knish
• savory and sweet blini

Of these, my favorite was the knish, which isn’t surprising, since that was the main thing I was excited about getting — I used to get knishes at a deli when I worked downtown, and I’ve missed them. I had really wanted the meat knish, but it was sold out — need to get there earlier in the day than 4:30 p.m., apparently! The potato knish was crisp on the outside, soft and flavorful on the inside — I was going to split it with Kevin, but I apologetically ended up eating the whole thing myself.

The beef short ribs were also very good, tasty and tender. I personally would’ve liked even more pomegranate in it, but I really like the fruit & meat combo, and I suspect this is a better level of that for most people.

Kevin enjoyed his pastrami sandwich, though he thought the challah was an odd choice for it — they did also include some slices of what I think is rye, though I’m not sure what that came with. I tried a bit of the pastrami, and thought it was yummy, though I’m not a pastrami connoisseur.

I was a little surprised by the latke, which I didn’t order — not sure if it typically comes complimentary with the pastrami sandwich, or if they just threw it in. I was a little sad that there wasn’t applesauce for the latke, but I suppose I shouldn’t look a gift latke in the mouth. I do like applesauce with my latkes, though. (Editing to note that yes, they did provide sour cream for the latkes, but I prefer applesauce, and previously when I’ve ordered latkes, they’ve included both.)

The matzoh ball soup, I have a question about, I suppose. The broth was quite salty, and the matzoh balls seemed mostly not salted. So together, they made a reasonably flavored bite, but is that typical? Personally, I would’ve pulled back on the salt in the broth and added a little bit to the matzoh balls, but I am not Jewish, and I don’t want to stomp on tradition here…

The sweet blini also surprised me, because while it was mild, it didn’t seem very sweet. I almost wanted to drizzle honey over it. Is it meant to be actually sweet? I haven’t had blinis enough to be able to comment on that.

In any case, I feel like I’m quibbling — overall, I think this is a great addition to the neighborhood, and I do plan to stop back sometime soon, earlier in the day, to try that meat knish! They have lots of seating, so while I got takeout, you can certainly enjoy a nice family meal inside. I arrived in between the lunch and dinner rush, but it was starting to fill up as I left.

Is it too early to wish folks a happy Rosh Hashanah? I think it starts at sundown tonight, or possibly tomorrow?

May the coming year be filled with peace, health and prosperity for you and your loved ones!

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D20 Birthday Waffles

Today for Anand’s birthday weekend, I’ve promised to run a small D&D-style one-shot game for him. A couple of friends are coming over later today, so I need to go find some character sheets to download and remind myself how to roll up characters. But I thought it was appropriate to start the day off with D20 waffles…