Untimely meals

Starting the day with stove-top oats is becoming a nice ritual on non-work days.  On Saturday, I woke up at 7:30 without an alarm (not ideal), but embraced it and jump kicked the weekend with some coffee…and blogging.

Evidently, I took zero photos of my beautiful cup of joe.

And yet, somehow I wound up with 800 pictures from my pumpkin oat cooking session.  The recipe isn’t rocket science, and yet, I feel like it’s so pretty that I’m committing a crime in not taking pictures.

Don’t worry, I deleted half of them, so now you only have to endure the best of the best.  I’ll go with a nursing technique for the oat portion of this post: charting by exception.  In other words, I’m only noting the changes from my normal oat making routine.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup dry oats (that’s a lot of oats!)
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 cup milk (Lactaid)
• 3/4 cup pumpkin puree
• 1/2 apple, chopped
• 1/2 pear, semi-mashed (it was on it’s death bed, so it was pretty much a juicy mess)
• cinnamon
• ginger
• salt
• stevia

Unlike previous bowl of oats (where I stir in the chopped fruit at the end or add it on top), this time I added the apples and pears at the very beginning (water boiling) stage so they were super soft when the oats were all done cooking.

Check out the mid-gurgle photo.  Bubble bubble.

The cinnamon and ginger make it pumpkin pie like.  I never really thought to add ginger to oats, but it was definitely a good call.

In total, it made over 2 cups of warm, oaty heaven.  This is because of all the pureed ingredients I added in addition to the initial liquid.  It made for a more soupy consistency, but once it cooled a bit, it was just as hearty as always.

Obviously I sprinkled coconut on top.  Your guys’ Tropical Traditions coconut flakes giveaway entries have been giving me some awesome ideas, so keep ‘em coming!

Soon this will be yours.

I got sick of lugging that big tub out multiple times a day, so now I’ve distributed some in a jar for easy access.  Now I just need to refill it as I need (which shouldn’t be a problem since I still have over 3 pounds remaining).

My pot of oats yielded way more than I expected and I ended up refilling the mug for seconds because it wouldn’t all fit in the first time around.  I should have measured the volume at the end.  I wouldn’t be surprised if it was in the 3 cups range.  Crazy.  I had another apple and completely mushy pear on the side.

And wouldn’t you know it, those pumpkin pie oats held me over until the early afternoon.

After digesting, I went on a run, hit up the grocery store, made myself a snack, and tried not to distract Kyle from finals studying.

Salty Roasted Cocoa Nuts are very distracting though.

YUM!

In addition to the sweet & salty almonds, I had candied ginger, a pair of apples (one gala/one golden delish), and a Gingerberry Kombucha.

Since I was hungry by 4, I opted for an early dinner.  My body was (is) probably still out of whack from the odd schedule I’ve been keeping, so I have no choice but to roll with it.  I’m way more comfortable eating real meals as opposed to continuously snacking until more “normal” meal times.  To be honest, the clock is more annoying than helpful these days and I’ve come to ignore what is socially acceptable in terms of timing.  If I’m awake and my body is legitimately hungry, then I’m going to eat.  That’s a no brainer.  The hard part is listening to my body enough to determine when I’m truly hungry and when I’m just delirious.  In other words, I want to make sure that my being awake and bored at 3 am doesn’t lend itself to default eating because there’s nothing else to do at that hour.

Now back to my senior citizen special…

I was having one of those I-have-no-clue-what-I-want moments.  So annoying.  The above plate is what resulted from my indecisive mood.  The open faced Alvarado Street bread was toasted and ended up becoming a peanut butter sandwich (we have jam, I just didn’t feel like anything sweet).  The other hideous yellow thing you see is the remainder of the LightLife vegan Smart Bacon which I fried up on the pan.  I added organic eggs to the bacon filled pan (which I meant to scramble all together), but then I forgot about them altogether while making the PB sammie.  I barely rescued the dish from a smokey fate.

Totally random.  Totally hideous.  Totally the type of meal I don’t photograph or share.  But I figured you guys may as well see the real deal – my food isn’t always glamorous or blog worthy.

 

Not surprisingly I was hungry again later.

Dinner numero dos: seitan, quinoa, roasted brussel sprouts.

After this photo was taken I added so much Bragg’s to the plate, it was nearly stew.

For dessert I had Theo’s Nutcracker Toffee dark chocolate and an apple.

Look at the edge of the chocolate.  Weird right?  Hmmm…I guess it may have been damaged in the shipping process.  Don’t worry, it tasted fine 😉