Oatmeal
One of the oddest things I think that gets people attention is eating oatmeal for breakfast. When I sometimes eat oatmeal at work I get comments from people mentioning how healthy it is. They usually follow up with some chatter on how they should be eating healthier for breakfast. For whatever reason it seems to make people feel guilty when I eat it around them.
I actually can’t remember exactly when I started to eat oatmeal, but it was probably around college. As a kid, I remember eating cereals on the weekdays, instant ramen on the weekends, and occasional pancakes and waffles on special days.
My favorite kids cereal was Cookie Crisp. It is a cereal umm, made out of ‘tiny cookies’. It probably had tons of sugar, and that’s why it was delicious.
It is kind of crazy, but I have been eating oatmeal for breakfast probably about 10 years consistently now. Originally my recipe was
- Add oatmeal to a pot
- Add water
- Bring oatmeal to boiling
- Stir until finished.
The problem with that is it just takes too much time. Eventually my recipe changed to:
- Add oatmeal to a bowl
- Add 4x water
- Microwave for 2 minutes
Even though this would be faster, sometimes the oatmeal will spill over the bowl. I adjusted the recipe where if I soaked the oats overnight, it would cook more evenly.
More problems started when I found this place that harvested fresh oats in British Columbia. Instead, these oats would take 40 minutes to cook it on the stove. Fortunately with an instant pot, you can simplify the recipe
- Put 50 grams of oats in a bowl
- Put in 200 grams of water (4x)
- Put water in the base of the instant pot
- Put the steamer rack in
- Put the bowl on the rack Set the delay timer for it to go off at 6am When waking up at 7am, the oatmeal would be ready.
This recipe is interesting because it allows you to cook oatmeal in the bowl and has no mess at all.
One day I went to my local Vietnamese restaurant to buy some Nêm cuốn chay (Vegetarian pork rolls), and I was eating oatmeal out of a bowl with some fruits.
She stopped me and told me in Vietnamese that she always wanted to cook oatmeal, but never knew how. I gave her the directions in my broken Vietnamese how you can add water and microwave it, but to be careful it doesn’t overflow.
For some reason that conversation has always stuck with me. Never in a million years would I have guessed a Vietnamese restaurant owner who cooks awesome vegetarian food would ask me how to cook oatmeal.
