Oh, how I love oatmeal. Particularly on cold winter mornings like we’ve had here in New York recently, there’s nothing quite like a hearty bowl of cinnamony smooth oats with sweet bits of apple to make the whole picture even more lovely. I’m not so much a fan of comfort food anymore (too much emotion packed into that picture), but if there is such a thing for me, this recipe is it. Because I’m not trying to lose weight, I have it every day in fairly large quantities, but even just half of the recipe below is plenty for normal people. (My caloric needs are insanely high. My husband generally eats half the oats that I do in the morning.)

Recently when a babysitter helping me during my recovery from my fall commented on making oats from scratch like it was something she’d never considered (shock, horror!), I realized that not everyone knows you can make much healthier oatmeal by yourself in a matter of minutes, though.

Forget the Quaker stuff — my personal favorite as a child — which is made from instant oats that are extremely low in fiber compared with rolled oats and steel-cut oats (the latter of which is much healthier, but does take more time to prepare) and is packed with added sugar and additives. A look at the ingredients shows that in addition to the oats, sugar and dehydrated apples (which, they remind you, are treated with sodium sulfite — ick!), the instant stuff also contains calcium carbonate, natural and artificial flavors, oat flour, citric acid, guar gum (a thickener), vitamin A (known to be carcinogenic) and a whole host of additional nutrients that you can get much more easily and healthfully from whole foods.

The recipe below is simple, healthy and can easily be doubled, tripled, etc. as long as you have a pot big enough to fit in all the ingredients with a little room to stir. Here’s the basic ratio:

1 cup rolled or steel-cut oats*

2 cups water (or for slightly sweeter oats, you can use half apple juice and half water)

1 tsp. cinnamon

1-2 apples, chopped finely (the more apples, the better!)

Place all ingredients in small saucepan. Bring to a boil, stirring often with a wooden spoon. Once oats begin to boil, turn down to very low setting and allow to simmer, stirring often to make sure oats don’t stick on the bottom. (On a gas stove, use your smallest burner for the simmering stage no matter how big a pot of oats you make and you’ll cut down on the sticking problem considerably.) When oats reach desired consistency — approximately 12 minutes of cooking time– serve and enjoy.

If oats are too thick, simply add in water 1/8 to 1/4 cup at a time until desired texture is reached. (I personally prefer slightly thinner oats and make mine with about 2.5 cups liquid for every 1 cup of oats.)

* Note that steel-cut oats take a good bit longer to cook — up to half an hour. You can either put the oats on to soak the night before (simply put oats and water in the pot you will cook them in in the morning, cover and refrigerate), use your crockpot (which I haven’t done before, but have been told that a fuzzy logic style crockpot handles this easily without burning the oats) so that you wake up to freshly cooked oats or just start the batch of oats when you first get up and stir occasionally while you get ready for your day.

Healthy eating notes:

If you follow Dr. Fuhrman’s Eat to Live dietary recommendations and are trying to lose weight, approximately 1-1/4 cups of this recipe is considered your serving of starch for the day. That extra 1/4 cup is to accommodate the apples. If you want a larger portion without increasing your amount of starch, simply increase the ratio of apples to oats, add in a little more cinnamon if desired and enjoy.

If you really love oats and don’t mind having them leftover (which, I can admit, for an oatmeal neophyte might be a little gloppy, for lack of a better term, though you can refresh them with a little water and a sprinkling of cinnamon), you can make up enough for 3-4 days at once and simply heat up the amount you need over the course of the week. I personally do this often to cut down on food prep time.

You could easily substitute other fruit, such as blueberries, pears or peaches for the apples. (Just be forewarned that if you add in the blueberries before the very end, you’ll have deep purple oats!) I can easily find frozen organic sliced peaches in my local grocery stores, which would simplify this already easy recipe even further.

Wheat-free/gluten-free diets: The regular oats you buy at the grocery store are often highly contaminated with wheat and other glutinous grains, unfortunately. I personally cannot tolerate any gluten in my diet, but I do not have celiac disease, so I buy special oats that are both grown far away from other glutinous grains and then are processed (to the small extent rolled and steel-cut oats are processed) in special plants where there is zero risk for cross-contamination. Some celiacs can handle these oats, and others can’t. The tastiest GF oats I’ve found are the rolled oats from GlutenFreeOats.com, but you may find the Bob’s Red Mill GF oats more easily at your local health food store or grocery.

Copyright 2009 Jennifer McCay

www.LeanGreenMama.com