Basic Steel Cut Oats

Last week I was full of motivation. I cooked, stuck to my strength training routine, cleaned, donated a few items of clothing, I got a couple of pictures framed. I was totally on fire.

Then, Friday happened and I suddenly became very well acquainted with the couch. You see, I threw my back out.

How, might you ask?

I sneezed. I wish that I was just kidding I had a better story for you. Let’s pretend that I was rock climbing, and halfway up my back spazzed out on me. Let’s ignore the fact that I was just pulling up a blanket to get warm…and sneezed.

Yes, I’m cool. In my defense, the doctors think that I just aggravated an old injury (for which I do have a cool story). Sadly, whenever this happens, it never happens during a yoga inversion, a long run, a dive, or when I’m moving furniture. Nope, it happens when I step off a curb or sneeze.

So the last three days have been a study in me getting to know the couch. I suppose I could have taken the easy way out and taken the cortisone shot and heavy-duty meds, but I don’t do needles, or hard painkillers. I took my “weak” prescription and heating pads and suffered along my merry way.

Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let me go my merry way without the cone of shame:

(source)

Not that cone of shame. The soft collar of shame, and no one is getting a picture of that.

Guess what? Those things make eating a complete pain. Or maybe it was the fact that my lats & traps were doing the Mexican Hat Dance that made eating tough?

I’ll have to think about that.

Instead of being adventurous…and in the interest of not moving a lot. I made a big batch of steel-cut oats (easy to swallow), and topped with bananas and nut butter. I was hoping that a little extra potassium and magnesium would tell the offending muscles to knock it off.

No such luck, but at least the oatmeal was yummy.

Basic Steel Cut Oats
serves 2
Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup steel-cut oats (I used McCann’s Irish Oatmeal)
• 2 cups water
• 1 tbsp brown sugar (or other sweetener)
• toppings of your choice (I used a banana, a scoop of peanut butter and a splash of almond milk)

Directions:
Bring the water to a boil and add the oats, stirring until the mixture begins to thicken and appears smooth. Stir constantly at this point to ensure it doesn’t boil over. It took about 5 minutes for me to progress to the next stage; reduce heat and simmer for 20-30 minutes. It only took me 20, but it may take you longer depended on your stove.

Remove from heat, stir in brown sugar until dissolved, ladle into bowls and top away! Hearty, healthy and filling breakfast for a cold day. Look for a new post in a few days showing a short cut for those of you craving this on a workday.

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