New found love: Oatmeal

I have recently found a new love in the kitchen - oatmeal! There are so many benefits to eating oatmeal. There are a few things one should consider when deciding what oatmeal to eat. There is another good blog out there that discusses the different kind of oats that you can make oatmeal out of.

First of all you have instant oatmeal - bad choice. The oats are rolled out very flat to make them faster cooking that they in turn lose a good portion of their nutrients. Not to mention that instant oatmeal is packed with artificial flavors and lots of sugar.

Quick oats are processed much the same way as instant, but without all the flavors and sugars.

Now moving to a better type of oatmeal: Old Fashioned Rolled Oats. These oats are steamed, rolled and then pressed. They are quicker to cook (about 5 minutes) but they still have most of their nutrition still in them. This type of oat I like 2nd best. It is cheap, whether you buy it in the big can or you buy it from a health food store. It is quick and you can add whatever you like too it - but keep in mind, the more sugar you add to it, the less nutritious it will be for you.

Now to my number one favorite oat: steel cut oats. These oats are cut with steel blades just to make them smaller. All of their nutrition is still packed in and ready to be enjoyed! There is one draw back - but it has a simple solution. Steel cut oats take longer to cook (about 30 minutes). Simple solution: you can cook them the night before!

This is how I like to cook steel cut oats (although there are other ways, I just find this easier).

I cook my steel cut oats the night before. Usually while I am winding down from work or eating dinner, because I get off late.

*Above information about the oats was mostly obtained through this wonderful blog:

http://intofitness.blogspot.com/2009/02/understanding-different-types-of.html

Cooking Steel Cut Oats

1 cup steel cut oats

4 cups water

1. Bring the 4 cups of water to a boil then add your steel cut oats. Let boil for about 4 minutes.

2. Turn the burner to low and let simmer for 30 minutes.

After the oats are cooked, you can either enjoy or put in the fridge and serve in the morning. This will make about 4 servings for one person. To reheat them, all I do is put them in a little pan on the stove and heat them up! They still taste awesome. You can reheat them in the microwave.

Okay, and now I have a recipe for you! It's one of my trials that was not an error! I love trying new things to add in my oatmeal, and this is now one of my favorites.

Cinnamon Apples

3 Tbsp. water

1 Apple

1/8 tsp. Ground Nutmeg

1 tsp. Cinnamon

1 Tbsp. Splenda

1. Add all the ingredients into a small sauce pan. Simmer on low for about 10 minutes, or until apples are soft. Stir occasionally.

*This make a single serving. I put the whole contents in my bowl of oatmeal. You can even make this recipe ahead of time (thats what I do). Just refrigerate it and heat it up in the same pan as your oatmeal the next day.

If you are interested in checking out the health benefits from oatmeal, here is a good site:

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=54#healthbenefits

Enjoy!

Sweeteners

I don't know about everyone out there, but all these artificial sweeteners kind of scare me! One comes out and at first it isn't harmful to you, then a month down the road it is harmful for you!

The only artificial sweetener I have ever used is Splenda. I like it, but there is still something that scares me about it - maybe it's the fact that when you type in "side effects of [insert artificial sweetener name here]," in a search engine that harmful facts actually come up! (Ironically the first recipe that I will be posting uses Splenda.)

In my quest to eat healthier I would like to try sweetening things with honey. When I searched for bad side effects from honey I couldn't find any! I will still use Splenda sparingly, but trial and errors are what I am all about!

Here is an interesting site I found about honey - I haven't looked through all of it yet, but I thought I would post it anyways.

http://www.benefits-of-honey.com/

Happy reading! New recipe should be up tomorrow!

Introduction

The past few months I have been trying to live healthier in general and I have also been hitting a lot of snags - some of which are probably just poor excuses. I realize that living healthy involves a lot of changes! This includes things like positive mental thinking, eating right, exercising, etc.

My main goal is to start eating healthy! I have pretty poor eating habits - but of course I am not that bad, I can at least say that fast food is not really part of my diet. I have tried past diets, like Atkins, GI Diet, and Weight Watchers. I am not trying to say they don't work, they just don't work for me. The most useful one I have ever tried was the GI Diet. To me it's not really a diet, it's a new way to look at what you are eating. Im done with diets; besides, have you ever noticed that the word diet contains the word die?

I have decided to do a little at home research on foods that are healthy and how to cook them. I have researched a few recipes, but I am having a hard time finding ones that I like. To counteract the problem of not liking the recipes I have decided to experiment in my kitchen with the new healthy foods I am discovering.

I want to thank my health food store for opening my eyes at some of the new foods I am going to try!

Also, as part of my quest for a healthier lifestyle I have also decided to give up some of the time I am spending on the computer - so I may not have new posts everyday, but when I try something new I will be sure to post the outcome and possibly some pictures to go with it!