Oatmeal for breakfast

One day, I'll try this recipe for raw oatmeal.  It looks amazing.  In the meantime we have a gargantuan box of Quaker Old Fashioned Oats in the pantry.  Since our original agreement was to not do a full pantry purge, we are using up what is on hand and replacing it with better alternatives as needed.

Last night, my son put about a cup of oats in water and placed in the fridge.  This morning, I realized I forgot to soak the almonds for milk.  Normally I would just skip the soaking, but this morning we tried something new just for the heck of it.

We used almond butter instead of almonds.  It wasn't raw,  but we aren't going for 100% raw.  If you don't like the taste of flax meal, (we do,) you can reduce it by at least half or eliminate it.  Both almonds and flax meal are rich in calcium, so this is a great breakfast staple.  This makes more than enough for our family for a day or two.

Here's the recipe:

Quick Almond Milk

2-4 cups water according to preference
ice if you want to drink it cold right away
1/2 cup almond butter
3 pitted medjool dates
2 tbsp flax meal
1/2 tsp vanilla
salt to taste if needed

Start with one cup of water and the almond butter, dates, flax and vanilla in a blender.  Blend for at least one minute.  Taste and make adjustments as needed.  The flavors should be more intense because you'll be adding more water.  You may find it needs salt, (there was salt in the almond butter and we don't use a lot of salt to begin with,) or more dates or vanilla.  Then add additional water, blend, and taste again.  If your mixture is getting warm in the blender, you can add ice, or if you want it warm just add more water.

Now for the breakfast.  We simply strained the soaked rolled oats, (probably not necessary to strain it, but we did this time,) top with blueberries, cover with almond milk, and sprinkle with cinnamon.

It was delicious.  One cup of soaked oats with six ounces of blueberries will feed two adults, or one adult and two little ones.  For a heartier meal, increase the oats, and add chopped walnuts.  For optimal digestion, soak the walnuts for 6 -8 hours and rinse.

All these years, I thought we "had to" cook our oatmeal, and it's really not necessary to turn on the stove!