Recipe ReDux: Kahlua & Cream Oatmeal [sponsored]

Did you know that 99% of Americans do not meet the daily whole grain recommendations and 85% fall short of dairy recommendations? That means you and your family could be missing out on calcium, Vitamin D, potassium and fiber! Ward off that osteopenia/osteoporosis and keep your GI tract happy! (Your body will thank you for it.)

Quaker Oats and The National Dairy Council challenged me to make a ReDux members to develop creative and tasty breakfasts, snacks or side dishes featuring the power of whole grain oats with the goodness of reduced/low-fat dairy. (By posting this recipe I am entering a recipe contest sponsored by National Dairy Council and the Quaker Oats Center of Excellence and am eligible to win prizes associated with the contest. I was not compensated for my time.)

I adore oatmeal, and although I may or may not be very slightly lactose-intolerant, it has not stopped me from drinking the milk from Homestead Creamery. (Apparently, they sell it here too!) I very, very rarely drink alcohol (think 1 tbsp every couple years, if even, and by tablespoon, I mainly just mean Kahlua in a dessert of some sort), but my favorite “drink” is a White Russian without the vodka, which…is essentially just Kahlua & Cream. :P

My favorite way to add some protein to my oatmeal (and to give it a fluffier, creamier texture!) is to throw in an egg, and the chilled sliced bananas add a nice contrast to the hot oatmeal! You can adjust the kahlua:water/milk ratio if you’d like more than just a hint of it in your oatmeal. :] This recipe makes about two servings!

Kahlua & Cream Oatmeal

Ingredients:
-1.5 ripe bananas (1 mashed, 0.5 sliced + chilled)
-1 tsp pure vanilla extract
-1 cup old-fashioned oats
-1 cup 2% Homestead Creamery milk
-1/2 cup water
-1/4 cup Kahlua
-1 egg
-ground cinnamon, to taste
-dash of sea salt

Instructions:
1) Fill a bowl with hot water and place the egg (still in shell) in for ~1 minute.
2) Combine milk, kahlua, water, 1 mashed banana, and oatmeal into a pot on medium/low heat.
2) Crack the egg into the pot and bring the oatmeal to a boil over high heat, then reduce to a simmer. Stir continuously until the oats soften and the liquid thickens.
3) Add the vanilla extract and sea salt.
4) Cook to desired consistency. If it’s too thin, cook it a little longer (may get somewhat mushy though). If it’s too thick, add a little more liquid.
5) Top with sliced bananas and sprinkle with ground cinnamon.

Almond Pancake

I’m still [more or less] in the midst of unpacking everything, so cooking hasn’t been happening anywhere as often as I’d like. (That coupled with illness and an actual set schedule for the first time in 2 years takes some getting used to! I got spoiled with the whole mostly-not-mandatory-attendance thing.)

In my laziest moments, it’s invariably either my rice cooker or my crockpot that ends up coming to the rescue. Today, it’s my rice cooker. :] You may have seen this idea on lifehacker at some point in time. I’ve been meaning to expand on the whole rice cooker cake idea for a while now, so what better time to start than now? This is not in plural form because one giant pancake is probably more than enough. :O

(Chocolate Banana) Almond Pancake

Ingredients:
-Namaste Foods gluten-free pancake/waffle mix (it was on manager’s special for $2 at Kroger!)
-2 tbsp unsweetened applesauce
-2 eggs
-3 tbsp almond powder*
-1/2 cup vanilla soy milk
*obtained from an Asian market (ingredients: almond powder, almond oil, cornstarch, sugar)

Instructions:
1) Mix everything together until no longer lumpy.
2) Cook in rice cooker for ~45 minutes! (I set it to the “cake” function on mine.)
3) Top with desired toppings (honey, maple syrup, fresh fruit, etc.) and serve.

For the record, I used a chocolate bourbon sauce + sliced bananas to top mine. Those pretty much cancelled out any almond-ness I could’ve tasted, but you can still smell its essence! :]

…It’s pretty much a cake!

(Also linked up on this week’s Delicious Dish Tuesday! Button is on the sidebar! :)

Orange Creamsicle Oatmeal

I saw Arman’s post for Cake Batter Oatmeal a couple weeks ago and decided that I really needed to make it, but at the time, I was in the process of finishing off my Orange Cream milk, so I used that instead and came up with this! (The only real difference here is just the milk, haha.) I still gotta try to make the actual cake batter version sometime, but for now, this will suffice!

Orange Creamsicle Oatmeal

Ingredients:
-1/2 cup quick oats
-1/2 tsp salt
-1 1/4 cups Homestead Creamery Orange Cream milk
-1 scoop vanilla protein powder
-1 egg
-1 tbsp coconut flour
-1 tbsp coconut, shredded

Instructions:
1) Combine oatmeal, salt + milk in a saucepan and cook until most of the liquid has been absorbed. Whisk in egg and cook for another 1-2 minutes.
2) Stir in protein powder + coconut flour, then add the rest of the milk.
3) Refrigerate overnight (preferably), uncovered.
4) The next morning, stir oatmeal and add shredded coconut!

Hash Brown Bake with Eggs & Smoked Salmon

Monika and I decided to meet up one weekend to make a wholeeeee ton of food so we wouldn’t have to worry about cooking and would have at least somewhat nutritious (and if not nutritious, at least it was home-cooked!) meals for the rest of the week (if not more, because the lovely thing about casseroles is that they can be frozen! Hooray hooray!). That was a long sentence.

Monika pilfered this from a magazine at the doctor’s officer (“No shame!”) and after we made it, we split it in half, so I’m basing the nutritional content off of 12 servings (they’re gonna be small-ish but glorious servings).

Hash Brown Bake with Eggs & Smoked Salmon

229 calories, 16g CHO’s, 14g fat, 8g protein, 2g fiber, 274mg sodium!

Ingredients:
-8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
-1/4 cup whole milk
-3 tbsp butter, melted
-1 bag (30 oz) frozen hash browns, thawed
-3/4 cup scallions, thinly sliced
-6 eggs
-8 oz. smoked salmon
-2/3 cup sour cream
-sea salt
-freshly ground black pepper

Instructions:
1) Position rack in lower 1/3 of oven and preheat to 375. Grease a baking dish.
2) Melt the butter and cream cheese (kindasorta) and mix it in a blender with the milk until smooth.
3) In a large bowl, combine the hash browns, cream cheese mixture + 3/4 cup scallions. Season with salt and pepper and transfer to baking dish.
4) Smooth over the top and use a ladle to make 6 shallow indentations in the hash browns. Bake until edges are brown (~45 minutes).
5) Remove casserole from oven. Preheat broiler.
6) Crack an egg in each indentation + season. Broil until the whites are set (~3-4 minutes).
7) Place salmon and a dollop of sour cream near each egg.

Peach Apricot Baked Oatmeal

I’m on a mission to finish off this protein powder because I can’t stand it. :[ I bought it because it was on sale and had a pretty good nutrition breakdown, but holy eff, it tastes powdery and gross and doesn’t mix well at all. ;_; Sad times. I’ve been trying to throw it into everything I can think of, and I’m almost done with one container, but…I have another one to go. (That’ll teach me to go around buying random things on sale, huh? But it got good reviews! :'( ) Maybe it’s just me.

In any case, I made this a couple weeks ago because I had insomnia and decided that it was better to just food-prep some more for the rest of the week instead of just lying there and doing nothing. Twas a good plan indeed.

Peach Apricot Baked Oatmeal

~7 servings; 169 calories, 26g CHO’s, 3g fat, 10g protein, 3g fiber, 129mg sodium!

Ingredients:
-1 14 oz can apricots
-1 14 oz can peaches
-1 1/2 cup oats
-6 tbsp MLO super high protein powder
-2 tbsp brown sugar
-3 tbsp ground flaxseed
-1/2 tsp salt
~1 1/4 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk
-1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions:
1) Preheat oven to 375.
2) Combine all ingredients into large pan.
3) Bake for ~40 minutes.
4) Top it off with walnuts, shredded coconut, almonds, dried fruit…whatever tickles your fancy!