Pumpkin Spiced Oatmeal

Fall is finally here and with it, a plethora of pumpkin foods.

Seriously. Everybody has a pumpkin everything. The bakery where I get the office's Saturday morning bagels had pumpkin scones and pumpkin bars; the coffee shops all have pumpkin lattes, and restaurants serve pumpkin soups.

The DDH, who is not a huge pumpkin fan (he doesn't like sweet potatoes either, except as fries), rolls his eyes at this particular trend. But I like pumpkin (and sweet potatoes, for that matter), so it makes me happy.

For three-quarters of the year, I eat oatmeal for breakfast. It's fast, it's easy, it's tasty. I can change it up by adding different dried or frozen fruit. In the summer, it's too hot for oatmeal, and for most of this pregnancy I haven't been able to stomach it or similar warm foods. But my oatmeal appetite has returned with the cooler weather, and I've been happily noshing on strawberry-cherry oatmeal every day.

But then. Then I found a recipe for pumpkin spiced oatmeal.

My favorite fall food fad combined with my everyday, quick-and-easy breakfast?

The end.

This recipe is super easy to whip up, but, let's face it, waaaaay too complicated to make in the morning before work. Because scrambled eggs are too complicated to make in the morning before work. Sometimes coffee is too complicated to make in the morning before work. If it takes more effort than stirring water and ingredients in a bowl and popping it in the microwave, it's too complicated to make in the morning before work (which is why I tend not to eat breakfast in the summer when oatmeal isn't an option, oops).

BUT. This recipe reheats quite well. So I can make a big whopping batch of it on, say, a Thursday afternoon, and have breakfast for almost a week.

It's healthy and filling and fast--everything a breakfast should be. I'm in love.

Pumpkin Spice Oatmeal
Adapted from this recipe at Becky Bakes.

Make sure to read the notes at the end of the recipe regarding oat types and some tasty variations!

Set a medium saucepan on the stove on medium-low heat and gather up your ingredients. You may wish to measure your honey and pumpkin out in advance so you can add them quickly. Not that I speak from an experience wherein I almost burned my honey or anything.

To the hot, dry pan, add: 1/4 tsp. ground cloves, 1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, and 1/8 tsp. ginger.

Toast the spices for about two minutes, stirring occasionally so they don't burn. It seems silly to say "toast until fragrant" with these spices, because they're already fragrant. But you'll notice a point at which you suddenly say, "oh! that's what they mean by fragrant," because they'll suddenly smell even more like themselves than before.

Turn the heat down to low.

To the spices, add 1/4 cup honey

and 1 cup pumpkin puree.

You could probably do with as little as 1/8 cup of honey if you want less sweet oatmeal. See the Variations note below for some other options.

Stir the honey and pumpkin together until well combined and smooth.

 

Add 4 cups water to the puree mixture. (Note: If you use steel-cut oats, you may need 1/2 cup more water.)

 

Turn the heat up to medium high. Stir until combined and bring to a simmer.

 

Add 2 cups quick oats (1 1/2 cups steel-cut oats). See Oat Note, below.

 

 

Turn heat down to medium and simmer, stirring occasionally, twenty to thirty minutes or until tender.

 

After ten minutes, mine looked like this (remember I'm using quick oats):

Quick oats after ten minutes.

 After another ten minutes, they looked like this:

Quick oats after twenty minutes.

I declared them done at that point because I wanted them to still reheat well, but if you plan to eat it all right away, you may wish to let them go a little longer.

Either serve or remove from heat to a heat-safe container. Allow to cool before covering and refrigerating.

Pumpkin spice oatmeal.

 It reheated well the next morning:

Oatmeal reheated.

 And was delicious with a splash of cold milk:

Oatmeal with milk.

It of course lends itself to toppings: more cinnamon, fruit, nuts. I've been eating it with chopped almonds and it's delicious.

***



Oat Note:

Now. There are about a million and one types of oats out there. I usually buy the giant cardboard tube of "quick oats" because they cook quickly for my morning oatmeal but are a bit larger than "instant oats" for when I use them in recipes like this one. Sometimes I get rolled oats or steel-cut oats.

People will argue until they're blue in the face about what kind is better and how you REALLY ABSOLUTELY MUST use this one kind for one recipe or the other. But honestly? You can use any kind of oats in almost any recipe and you'll be fine. You may want to adjust the water : oats ratio of the recipe. You may need to adjust the cooking time. But don't let not having the Exact Perfect Right Kind of oats stop you from making a recipe that looks delicious. Try it with what you have on hand. Let me know if it's a total abject failure so I can delete this note. ;-)

 

***

Pumpkin spice oatmeal with almonds and milk.

Variations: 

• Sub any winter squash puree for pumpkin: butternut, acorn, etc. Also, sweet potato.
• Sub banana puree for the pumpkin. Add some chopped nuts for Banana Nut Oatmeal.
• Sub any liquid sweetener, such as agave or maple syrup, for the honey.
• Or sub unsweetened applesauce for the honey for a not-sweet but very autumny version.
• Use 1/8 cup honey and 1/8 cup molasses and up the ginger to 1 1/2 tsp. for Pumpkin Gingersnap Oatmeal. Bonus points for adding diced fresh ginger. This is my real new favorite.
• Play around with the spices, increasing or deleting them until you get it juuuuust right.

What variations can you think of?

 

I never bothered with any of the millions of baked oatmeal recipes on the internets, because heating up the oven seemed a lot of work for oatmeal. But I'm thinking a lot of those different flavor combinations could adapt well to this cooking method. Yum!

Granola Bars

For a long time, I cooked my dinners (and by extension, my lunches, since those are just leftovers), but I was still buying snacks and breakfast foods. Primarily, I bought granola and granola/protein bars and used them both as mid-morning snacks and meal substitutes on days when I was too busy or unmotivated or whatever to cook dinner.

Then I realized this was stupid. Here I was, endeavoring to make frugal, healthy, whole food meals, but eating expensive junky granola and protein bars. Seriously, that was the largest part of my food budget. Those things are freaking expensive.

And I thought, I can make soup from tomatoes I've grown myself. I can make bread and pasta and enchiladas and cookies from scratch. None of this stuff is actually hard to do. Why the heck am I shelling out all this money on granola bars when surely I can make healthier ones myself for much cheaper?

Yeah. It is ridiculously easy to make these things from scratch. I seriously probably spend as much time on prep for these as I used to spend dithering in the aisle at Sam's Club trying to figure out which box of bars provided the best nutritional value for the money (answer: none of them).

I bought the e-cookbook Healthy Snacks to Go by Katie Kimball at Kitchen Stewardship, and the below granola bar recipe is adapted from there. I highly recommend the book (I mean, it's only five dollars apparently I got it on sale. It's actually $6.95.) to anyone interested in homemade snacks. I usually use her granola recipe and protein bars recipe, as well, and if you are a Larabar fan, she has pages of recipes for making your own versions of their different flavors, too. Someone gave me a bag of dates recently and I think they are destined for a Larabar experiment. Also: homemade Wheat Thin crackers.

Alternatively, you can google a lot of this for free. So. You know.

Without further ado:

Homemade Granola Bars

Honey!

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Melt 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, 2/3 cup honey (Katie's recipe calls for a full cup but that was too sweet for us), and 1 teaspoon vanilla in a medium bowl in the microwave (or on the stove if for some reason you'd rather handwash a pot than dishwasherify a bowl). I do this at 30 second intervals, stirring after each, and it takes maybe 2-3 minutes.

(If you want peanut butter granola bars, substitute 1/2 cup peanut butter for 1/2 cup of the butter.)

It will look like this.

Meanwhile, mix together in a large bowl 4 1/2 cups of oats (yes, I just use instant oatmeal oats), 1 cup flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and 2 cups of mix-ins.

Dry ingredients.

Mix-ins are whatever you like in a granola bar. For this batch I used chocolate chips, dried cherries, sunflower seeds, coconut flakes, and chopped (well, pestled) almonds. I think it was one cup chocolate chips and then the rest together made one cup. You could use different flavors of chocolate chips, different nuts or dried fruit, whatever. I used all these things because I was almost out of all of them, so I just dumped in the bits I had left. Use what you have on hand, or plot out a delicious flavor combo and acquire those ingredients.

Almonds.

Pour your butter/honey mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well, until all the dry ingredients are moistened.

Before baking.

Press into a greased 9x13 pan. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brownish and somewhat dried out. They will probably still be sort of moist, which to me is a plus. Let cool in the pan for at least ten minutes before cutting. Slice and store in an airtight container in a cool dry place.

(I'll try and remember to take a picture of the finished bars and stick that in here.)

They should last a month or so on your counter just fine (depending, I guess, on what you use for mix-ins) or longer in the fridge.

The DDH loves these things. He thinks they are more filling and satisfying than my homemade protein bars (strangely) and on par with the big Power Bar things he always requested before.

I love them also, but they are definitely sweet. Skipping the chocolate chips would help, but a lot of it is the honey, too. I'm not sure if you can cut back on the volume any more without affecting the consistency of the bar. You could try substituting unsweetened applesauce maybe for some of the honey, or coconut oil maybe? Things to experiment with. ^_^