Category Archives: Recipes

We’re on a porridge kick at our house lately. When I say porridge, I mean steel cut oats, of course. As a young girl, I had my share of the rolled oats version of oatmeal and always found it rather lacking. The texture of the oats was closer akin to slime than a nutty oat and I always had the feeling I was eating slugs for breakfast. (What can I say, I was imaginative even as a youngster!).

Not having true slimey ogre-ish tastes (we’ve seen Shrek about a BILLION times at our house), when I decided to use oats to save money and feed my family something nourishing, I chose the non-slug version of oatmeal. Steel cut oats. Now, I reserve rolled oats for cookies and fruit crisps (a rarity at my house but I dream of getting around to that!).

Steel cut oats are nutty & creamy, warm and fill up your tummy! Not only that, they’re filled with all kinds of great nutrients like fiber, calcium, Vit-B complex (happy vitamin), magnesium, folate and potassium. We always add a dash of sea salt and a bit of fat – like a dab of butter or some milk. I know choosing to eat saturated fats flies in the face of some current ideas of health. However, the women in our family are (usually) amazingly  long lived and they always ate real food like butter, raw milk, eggs, meat etc. A little bit of healthy fat like butter or coconut oil early in the day will give you a surprising boost of energy and keep you feeling full till lunch.

But, where to buy steel cut oats? McCann’s Irish Oats may look cool on the shelf but they are pricey so I started buying Trader Joe’s Organic Steel Cut Oats. Then I discovered that  I could buy them in bulk from my local Whole Foods. They’re still organic but even more affordable that TJ’s (though I remain a loyal fan!). I suspect if you shop at Sprouts or Sunflower markets, you can find oats in their bulk section too. Just give them a sniff because if they don’t sell a lot of them, the oats tend go rancid. Nothing will ruin your first oat experience like a bowl of rancid oats!

The thing that probably keeps most people from eating steel cut oats is the cooking time. We all have places to go in the morning and no one wants to sit around waiting 30 minutes for their oats to cook!
Thankfully, it doesn’t have to take all morning & once you’ve cooked them, you can keep them in the fridge for several days and just heat them in the morning!. Here’s another option that reduces the cooking time significantly.

Last night we had a rather scary experience with our youngest, who fell off a chair and whacked her head hard enough to frighten me (which is actually pretty difficult). We called our doctor’s office and they gave us the usual instructions to postpone bedtime for a while, watch for concussion signs and then wake her after about an hour of sleeping.

Unfortunately, the accident happened right before bed (of course) so the girls were up pretty late and Rob stayed up even later to wake our youngest at the proposed time. To make matters worse, she did not fall asleep right away but spent an hour after we put her to bed talking. Clearly, she was not hurt as badly as we thought (thank goodness!) but we were all pretty exhausted this morning.

So, we slept in really late and enjoyed a fun wake-up hour with the kids giggling and playing before breakfast. When we finally made our way downstairs to eat, I realized we were out of our favorite Ezekiel bread (sprouted wheat, protein rich), so I decided to make biscuits. They were so good, I knew I had to post the recipe. Then, I laughed because I realized one of the few recipes I’ve posted here is another biscuit recipe. So, just to clarify…we don’t eat biscuits very often (unlike at my mom’s house where we ate them weekly! Boy, were they good!). But, every once in a while, a good biscuit is just the ticket! These are awesome with eggs but they’d be just as good with soup.

I started with a recipe by Mary Kincaid that I found over at www.allrecipes.com. You can see it here. But, I made some adjustments to fit the way we eat, including switching to whole wheat flour and replacing the milk with yogurt. They were simply amazing – tender and full of flavor.

So, add these to your list of healthi-er, fast things you can make during the holiday season.

So, if you are considering buying whipped cream in a can this week, I beg you to reconsider. Making it yourself tastes SO much better and your friends will all be impressed with your amazing culinary skills. Best of all, it only takes 5 minutes (so a little longer than I suggest in the video). Haha!

You can shorten the whipping time by using a stainless steel bowl – and do what I forgot to mention, chill the bowl with the cream in it for 15 minutes prior to whipping.

Enjoy!