What is this now? A food blog? A knitting blog? An overly personal blog? Who knows. It's a different thing every day. That's the beauty of NaBloPoMo, right?

Vegan Yum Yum wrote a great post all about a topic dear to my heart, oats. She explains the difference between rolled oats and steel cut oats, and offers up a recipe for apple cinnamon steel cut oats. It looks really good, especially the part about toasting the oats. I might try her recipe out sometime if I want an especially good batch of oatmeal on the weekend.

I have steel cut oats every morning for breakfast, and have experimented endlessly with flavor combinations. These days, I'm having apple cinnamon steel cut oats every day, but my version is so much simpler than Vegan Yum Yum's. Probably not as tasty, but simple and good for every day.

Recipe: Apple Cinnamon Steel Cut Oats - (2-3 servings)
(plus a few variations)

Heat 2 cups of water till it just starts to boil. Add 1/2 cup steel cut oats and turn heat to low, add lid and simmer for 30-45 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent oatmeal from sticking and burning or boiling over. Oatmeal is done when almost all the water is soaked up by the oatmeal, and oatmeal is thick when stirred.

Put 1/2 tsp of cinnamon and several spoonfuls of applesauce in each bowl (or 1-2 Tbsp apple butter). Divide oatmeal evenly between bowls. Stir. Eat.

Variations for those who maybe aren't as hard core about the oatmeal and therefore want more flavor:

- I don't usually use sugar in my apple cinnamon oatmeal, and I use no-sugar-added applesauce/apple butter, so this doesn't taste very sweet. If you have a sweet tooth, you might want to add sugar and/or use applesauce with sugar instead.
- If you want to add fresh apples instead, which obviously takes more work but is incredibly good, chop them small and add them to the cooking oatmeal about 15 minutes into cooking time and they'll soften up nicely and flavor the oatmeal. If the apples are very juicy, it might add a few minutes of cooking time. Optional: top with more apple bits before serving.
- Also can increase the apple flavor if you use 1/2 water, 1/2 apple juice or cider when cooking the oatmeal.

Brad likes to eat his oatmeal completely plain, so most of the ways I've come up with eating oatmeal involve adding flavors after the oatmeal has been cooked and dished out.
Here are some other after-cooking flavor options:

- Mix cinnamon into cooked oatmeal and then add banana slices.
- Mix in any kind of jam or preserves.
- Sprinkle some brown sugar on top of cooked oatmeal, and it will melt and be delicious.
- Mix in any kind of fresh or frozen berries (if using frozen, I put some in a bowl and let it sit next to the stove while cooking the oatmeal, so has a little time to thaw)