This morning, I made an interesting batch of oatmeal. As is usual in recent times, I left any sort of sweetener out. The dish begged for a little bit of honey though. And of course, we wanted to get the benefits of raw flax and pumpkin seeds since we had some around.
It's usually a chore to get our six-year-old to eat a lot of ground flax or even more than a few pumpkin seeds. Here was my solution for getting around that:
- Put some flax seeds and pumpkin seeds in a blender or Magic Bullet container.
- Soak them for at least 30 minutes; even better if you soak them overnight.
- Drain water off. Quickly rinse if you've soaked overnight.
- Add some honey, to taste. This is the key to getting kids to eat it. The more nuts that they put on their oatmeal, the more honey they get.
- Add a dash of soy or rice milk, to thin it out and promote whipping.
- Blend everything for about a minute, preferably with a blade designed for whipping.
It turned out very fluffy, only lightly sweet, and very delicious.
Instead of "Do I have to eat pumpkin seeds?" or "Only a little bit of flax, please", our son told us instead to put five spoonfuls of the nut butter on his oatmeal!
If you were curious about the oatmeal, here it is:
- Cast-iron skillet to medium high. Don't worry about preheating.
- Add lots of oats, some 7-grain cereal, and a little bit of Basmati rice.
- Add cinnamon, allspice, and pumpkin pie seasoning.
- Toast it for a while.
- Cut some apples into small pieces.
- Add apples to the dry ingredients and continue cooking/toasting.
- Boil some water in a separate pan while toasting.
- As water gets to boiling, pour a little bit at a time into the skillet and stir it in.
- Eventually, add enough water for everything to soak in for a bit.
- Turn skillet down to low and cover to simmer and keep warm while preparing nut butter.
- Serve hot over frozen blueberries. Add generous portions of nut butter.
