Oatmeal Nirvana

I bet you never imagined those two words would ever be in the same sentence together…but it’s true…a well cooked oatmeal is not only good for you but something that you will come to crave at any hour of the day or night.

If you’ve got any of that instant oatmeal in your cupboards, throw it out…that’s one sure way to turn someone off from eating oatmeal faster than you can say chocolate chip.

Trust me on this. A great oatmeal must start with whole oatmeal pieces that are usually sold under the names old fashioned or steel cut oats. I don’t even understand why they bothered to create the instant oatmeal product because the standard oats cook up fairly quickly.

There’s a lot of different terminology out there, so let’s try to demystify them one at a time. Rolled oats are oat groats (hulled grains) that have been rolled into flat flakes under heavy rollers and then steamed and lightly toasted. The oat like the other grain cereals has a hard, inedible outer husk that must be removed before the grain can be eaten. After the outer husk has been removed from the bran covered oat grains, the remainder is called oat groats. Steel cut oat groats are oats that have been chopped into smaller pieces and retain bits of the bran layer and makes them have a little chewier texture and bite.

Rolled oats that are sold as oatmeal for cereal usually, but not always, have had the tough bran removed. They have often, but not always, been lightly baked or pressure-cooked or “processed” in some fashion. Thick-rolled oats are large whole flakes, and thin-rolled oats are smaller, fragmented flakes.

Oat flakes that are simply rolled whole oats without further processing can be cooked and eaten as “old-fashioned” oatmeal, but more highly fragmented and processed rolled oats absorb water much more easily and therefore cook faster, so they are sometimes called “quick” or “instant” oatmeal. These tend to be very gluey and I don’t enjoy these at all and don’t even use them in oatmeal cookies.

I generally pick up a box of oatmeal at the grocery store, and don’t really insist on anything more than that. There are some great oatmeal products out there that come in small cans, but I don’t think that you should have to spend a small fortune on them so I stick to what I can get at the store.

The back of the package recommends a 1:2 ratio with oatmeal to water but it’s actually more of a 1:1 ratio for a perfectly cooked oatmeal that is delicious and chewy. The great thing about oatmeal is that you can make the base and add so many different things every day that it will never be boring. But when eating whole grains, we need to be more conscious of something called acid/base balance.

I have been doing research on acid/base balance for over a year and it’s something that is rarely discussed as a concern…but it should be.

One of the most delicate organs of the body are the kidneys, and with the onslaught of diets that tell you to eat high protein one day and high carb the next, we must all be a little more conscious of the effects that our food and drink has on the body. Statistics for renal cancers, gout, rare kidney stone formation and many other kidney related illnesses are on the rise, and I believe that a great deal of it is related to what we are consuming.

Don’t get me wrong, eating whole grain products is a great idea. Here in the USA we are really good about eating many different types of whole grain products, but we must remember that when consuming certain grains they must be tempered with other more alkaline products that will lighten the load on the kidneys.

I will be writing more articles about this in the future, but here is a great link if you are interested in doing some additional reading.

As far as the oatmeal is concerned, go ahead and make it then pile it high with lots of fresh and dried fruits. You will love it and definitely come back for more…

Gourmet Oatmeal (one large serving)

1 ¼ cups oatmeal

1 ¼ cups water

2 teaspoons vanilla

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

Pinch of ginger 

Make your wet nut mixture ahead of time and set aside. To cook the oatmeal, add the water and all of the other ingredients (except the oatmeal) to a small pot and place it on high flame until the water begins to boil. Once it boils, add the oatmeal all at once, stir it around quickly to make sure that the oatmeal is well coated with liquid and then turn down the heat to medium to let the oatmeal cook the rest of the way.

It will cook quickly in a few minutes to a perfect consistency once all of the water has evaporated.

At this point remove from heat and pour it out into your bowl. You can add some milk (very acidic) if you like on top of this along with fresh or dried fruits of your choice. I used fresh bananas and blueberries in addition to the wet nut mixture below. 

Wet Nut Mixture

½ cup chopped walnuts

½ cup chopped almonds

¼ cup raisins

¼ cup raw honey

Place everything together in a small pot or microwave safe dish and heat in microwave then set aside until your oatmeal is ready. If you have any leftover, you can keep this in the fridge.