Berry Pistachio Oatmeal

A few weeks ago, I splurged on pistachios. It felt irresponsible at the time, but then I tasted one.

It's not like I had never had a pistachio before. However, I think I've only ever had it in mixes of nuts, and the individual varieties kind of lose their distinct flavors.

It's been difficult for me to save these pistachios for oatmeal only (I often crave just snacking on them), but this recipe received the prestigious honor.

Lemon Lover's Baked Oatmeal

As I type this, my eyelids are drooping. I don't often talk about my work life on here, but times like this make it difficult to contemplate anything else. I spent the weekend redecorating my classroom, and on Saturday I was at school from 10 AM to 10 PM. ON THE WEEKEND, you guys! Today, I worked a similar length, but at least I was able to spend a portion of those hours working in my favorite coffee shop.

When I made this oatmeal on Sunday morning, I struggled to stay motivated. After working 12 hours a day, 8 days in a row, baking an oatmeal seems incredibly undesirable. However, this is what I scheduled to prepare over the weekend, and I had all the ingredients to do so. I knew the results would be worth it.

Salted Chocolate Pear Oatmeal

I've learned the secret. If you ever make oatmeal that doesn't turn out as spectacular as you'd hoped, just add SALT. Salt that sucker! Mix in salt, and sprinkle some more on top!

Much to my grief last week, I discovered that chocolate and pear just wasn't doing anything for me. To be honest, I was just super annoyed at the pears. I'm so over pears! They are potentially my least favorite fruit. I'm done with them.

But then I salted it, and everything changed.

Grape Salad Overnight Oatmeal

I'm not positive about this one, but this is probably another crazy Midwestern thing. We just LOVE take fruit, stirring in cream cheese, and calling it a salad. Hey, at least this one doesn't have marshmallows!

Grape salad was first introduced to me by my godparents. They brought it to some celebration we were having at my house (perhaps my sister's confirmation or something??). Cripes, this stuff is good. It consists of red and green grapes coated in a mixture made of cream cheese, sour cream, and a little brown sugar. It sounds pretty terrible written out like that (especially to someone like me who hates sour cream), but it's truly divine.

Peanut Butter and Grape Baked Oatmeal

Yeah, I finally made another baked oatmeal recipe. What can I say? The stove has my heart!

However, grapes in oatmeal fascinate me, and I've also been interested in what happens to grapes when they're baked. If you couldn't guess, this oatmeal is inspired by PB&J; the grapes take the place of grape jelly. (I grew up eating grape jelly, and it wasn't until last year that I finally accepted strawberry as another option. Still, grape is the best.)

Chai Stewed Apples Oatmeal

I've given up coffee. It was tough for me. Really tough. I've spent the last year sampling soy lattes at every coffee shop in New York City, but the past few months have been trying. Within hours of licking the last bits of froth off my mug, I would always find myself feeling woozy and having cold sweats. Every. Single. Time.

Instead, I've had to reinvest in my love for tea.

I really wish I could order chai more often at all my favorite coffee shops. Sadly, most places make theirs from a concentrate or powdered mix that already includes dairy. Bumsville.

Pomegranate Muesli

I am all about the muesli lately. It all happened when I discovered that pomegranate seeds make the best friggin' muesli ever. Why?! Because they can make the bulk of your muesli instead of nuts and dried fruit, which are wonderful and nutrient-dense, but they're also crazy filling and calorie-heavy. Of course I include them in my muesli, but it's not ideal to have an entire half cup of nuts and dried fruit in my morning cereal. That's a lot. I mean, one serving of nuts is only 1/4 cup, and 1/4 cup of dried fruit is a ton of sugar. So using pomegranates? Brilliant.

Pomegranates are crunchy like a nut or seed, but sweet like dried fruit. They have the added bonus of being absolutely beautiful to look at.

Apple Pie Steel-Cut Oatmeal

My grandma makes a killer apple pie. The apple filling reaches the perfect point between firm slices and mush. I don’t want to have to chew my apples when I’m eating pie, but I don’t want to slurp them like applesauce, either. She nails this balance every time.

The extra special twist is that her apples come from her backyard. An apple tree was planted in her yard each time a new grandkid was born. This means my brother, sister, cousins, and I each have our own apple tree. We take great pride in the apples that grow from them. Each time my grandma makes a pie, someone asks, “Whose apples are these?” There was a stretch of time when my tree was the champion, pumping out dozens of apples throughout the harvesting season. My apple tree is a boss.

I have a soft spot in my heart for apple pie. Well, to be honest, I just really love pie (pie > cake).

I feel like all my pie-themed recipes go through similar transformations where they emerge in every form, from stove-top, to baked, to overnight, to steel-cut. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before you see Pumpkin Pie Oatcakes or Apple Pie Muesli (how would that even work?!).

Apple Pie Steel-Cut Oatmeal

by The Oatmeal Artist

Prep Time: 5 min

Cook Time: 25 min

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Ingredients (serves 4)

• 2 cups milk of choice
• 2 cups water (or more milk)
• 1 cup steel cut oats (I use Country Choice Organic)
• 2 or 3 apples
• 1 tbsp flax meal or seeds (optional)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tsp apple pie spice (or 2 tsp cinnamon with two pinches each of nutmeg, allspice, and ginger)
• 1/2 tsp molasses (I use Blackstrap)
• 1/8 tsp salt

Instructions

1. Add milk and water to a large pot over medium heat.
2. While you wait, prepare your apples. Dice them into as small of pieces as possible (the smaller the chunks, the more evenly distributed the flavor will be!).
3. Once the liquid comes to a boil, add oats, diced apple, and flax. Reduce heat to medium.
4. Stir occasionally. After about ten or fifteen minutes, add vanilla extract, apple pie spice, molasses, and salt. Stir.
5. When you're pleased with the consistency of the oatmeal, transfer to four or five serving bowls. Add a splash of your milk of choice and any other additional toppings (pecans and maple syrup are wonderful).

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**You can also find hundreds of other oatmeal recipes (as well as tons of other meatless recipes) on my Pinterest account!  You can also like The Oatmeal Artist on Facebook. Thanks!

Orange and Sweet Potato Oatmeal

I hope nobody is getting impatient at my lack of baked and overnight recipes. My preference has always been for stove-top oats, so I will continue that trend most of the time. It also doesn't help that I do not have a microwave (for realz), so when I heat up my oatmeal in the morning, I just throw it on the stove to warm while I do my hair and make up. That definitely wouldn't work with a baked oatmeal!

However, I feel like I've pumped out some pretty fantastic recipes lately, so I will not apologize. This one uses just five ingredients and a pinch of salt--hurray for simplicity! As it turns, one orange is all it take to add a special brightness to a simple sweet potato porridge.

Pumpkin, Apple, and Cranberry Oatmeal

Pumpkin. How can I make more pumpkin recipes? What else can be done with pumpkin? These are the questions I ask myself twice a day.

What spices and herbs go well with pumpkin? What fruits pair well with pumpkin? What different forms of oatmeal have I not tried with pumpkin?!

The result of this never-ending search is today's recipe. Seeing how well apples paired with sweet potatoes, I knew they'd be smashing with pumpkin. Of course, cranberries are my go-to dried fruit for autumn recipes, so I threw those in as well. Aaaand bam, cue the world's coziest breakfast.

Salted Plum Oatmeal

Bubble tea (or “boba,” if you prefer) is the best. I sometimes feel like I judge people on whether or not they like bubble tea. Not in a “You don’t like boba = you suck at life” kind of way, but in a “You don’t like boba = I don’t understand you and we can’t be friends” kind of way. Like, I’m sure you’re a great person…but we just can’t be friends.

My favorite bubble tea place—despite all the wonderful teas I’ve had in NYC—is the Tea Garden in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. I’m serious. The best. You can actually taste the TEA, and it’s not just a sugar/juice-fest. They also have a ton of different flavors, and you can mix and match up to three flavors at one time. How is that NOT awesome?

Choco-Cherry Cashew Oatmeal

KIND bars cost too much. Let's all agree on that. Certainly, they are a high-quality product and deserve to cost as much as they do. However, this girl will not be buying them on the regular. This girl receives a living stipend (not an actual salary) and spends too much money at Banana Republic.

However, I splurge on one or two bars from time to time. In August, when I was technically homeless for a week, was massively in debt, and had no functioning kitchen to cook in, I survived on bananas, hummus, and whole wheat naan. To make my life seem less pathetic, I also treated myself to one single KIND bar.

I remember unwrapping it for a mid-morning snack during my staff training session. For a moment, my boss's voice faded off as my attention focused on the brilliance happening in my mouth. Dark chocolate, sweet cherries, and salty cashews worked harmoniously and created a chewy, crunchy, decadent snack bar.

Oatmeal Recipes for Autumn Lovers

I can take a hint. When I asked for what ingredients you'd like to see more of in my recipes, the resounding opinion was simply everything autumn. I couldn't agree more, which is why I've been pumping out all sorts of hearty, autumn goodness. Summer food is delicious, but when the temperature starts dropping slightly and everyone breaks out their best pair of boots, delving into a bowl of cozy porridge is truly perfection. This is the time of year when the "seasonal porridge lovers" join us crazies who eat it year-round. For once, everyone's in agreement, and we can all share our love of hot, creamy, pumpkin-themed oatmeal. :)

Here are my favorite and/or most popular autumn-themed oatmeal recipes. Plus, since everyone lurrrrves my autumn recipes, I capped myself off at ten recipes instead of five. (And yes, there will be pumpkin.)

Pumpkin Pie Steel-Cut Oatmeal

For over a year, I had to stomach the fact that my Salted Brownie Baked Oatmeal was my #1 most viewed recipe. I mean, that recipe was fine and dandy, but number one?? C'mon. Not even close. I could name thirty recipes that I'd pick over that one.

Luckily for me, the most wonderful thing happened about a month ago. As always, August and September ushered in the yearly pumpkin craze, and my Pumpkin Pie Oatmeal received a great deal of love on Pinterest. Out of nowhere, this recipe vaulted into the #1 spot and surpassed the Salted Brownie by thousands of views. COOL. I feel like my Pumpkin Pie Oatmeal is a much better representative of my blog than the Salted Brownie.

I love my pumpkin pie recipes. Certainly, they're not my MOST favorite, but they're in my Top Ten. You might think that I'd be satisfied with a stove-top, baked, and overnight version, but no, I'm not finished. Now that I've fallen in love with steel-cut oats, it just made sense to add another variation to my pumpkin pie family.