Fill-You-Up Breakfasts

I've been trying to broaden my breakfast horizons lately. I want to try to stay away from boxed cereals, frozen waffles, and other foods that my lazy self normally enjoys and stick with whole foods. I'm no hippie (or maybe I'm in denial...) but I like cooking from scratch, so why engorge in boxed foods? I need to embrace my creativity... with minimal work, haha! Anyway...

Usually I use my over-ripe bananas to make banana bread; but, honestly, after a while it gets pretty mundane to just make banana bread all the time!

I decided to come up with a random breakfast food a couple of weeks ago using some bananas that were nearing their end.

Banana Pan-Cakes

Makes 6 Cakes

1 cup rolled oats

1/4 cup ground flax meal

2 ripe bananas

1/2 tsp cinnamon

a spash of soy milk

I mashed up all the ingredients together. It kind of looked like sticky oatmeal cookie batter while tasting like banana bread!

Form them into 6 patties (or however many you want) and brown them in a skillet. For me this was about 5 minutes on each side. Yum!

Next up, I really enjoy the idea of things cooking themselves while I sleep. A while ago I tried to make crock-pot oatmeal and failed miserably. This time I decided to stay away from the heat as to avoid further disappointment.

Maybe this isn't traditional muesli but it tastes good (and is good for you!) and I don't know what else to call it.

Lazy Girl Tropical Muesli

Makes 2 servings.

Nutrition information is here.

1 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup plain nonfat Greek yogurt

16 pieces frozen mango chunks

3 packets Truvia sweetener

1/4 cup coconut flakes

1/3 cup unsweetened light soy milk

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl until thoroughly combined. It'll be really thick. Cover with a lid and refrigerate overnight.

I've made this a couple of more times with fresh diced up strawberries and kiwi, coconut, and sunflower seeds. It's very versatile, so use whatever you have on hand!

Overnight Failure

I wasn't prepared for disappointment this early in the morning. That pot with the brick-like object in the middle of a cloudy liquid? That's my crock pot as it was about 15 minutes ago this morning after an attempt at Overnight Oatmeal.

Epic fail indeed! About 85% of my steel-cut oats were nicely burned to the side of my crock pot, most of which was actually burned.

I was hoping that this morning I would be able to blog about how cooking oatmeal overnight is a great solution for those too lazy to make a nutritious breakfast in the morning. In the words of Borat... NOT! The only thing I did differently in this recipe was that my oats spent closer to 9 hours in the crock pot rather than 7-8, but 1/4 inch thick layer of burned oats doesn't just happen in one hour!

What to do, do? I need a quick breakfast with minimal effort!

Plain ol' oatmeal in the microwave.

1/2 cup quick-cook oats

1 cup water

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 packet Truvia

approx 2 tbsp Craisins

approx 2 tbsp chopped walnuts

Combine ingredients in a microwave-safe bowl, stir to combine, microwave for 2 minutes, and enjoy!

I'd consider this a learning experience, but I used the last bit of my steel-cut oats (which means I need to buy more) and the Overnight Oatmeal was supposed to yield 8 servings; that's 8 meals down the drain... literally!

Epic fail this early in the morning? Yikes. At least my last-minute oats were yummy.