One thing that you may not know about my family that makes us VERY different from most families is that we do not eat cold boxed breakfast cereal, it’s been at least 5 years (possibly longer, I honestly don’t keep track..) since we last ate any boxed cereal. My reasoning? Well, it’s expensive and for all that money you aren’t getting much at all in the way of nutrition…it’s a convenience food and nothing more.
I make a home-cooked breakfast every.single.day…breakfast is actually our biggest meal of the day! With dinner being medium sized and lunch being really just more of a snack to help quiet tummies till dinner time rolls around. We do A LOT of physical work around here, I get up at 8am and milk goats and feed animals and haul water buckets and haul wood and do all sorts of stuff before I even eat breakfast or even have my first cup of coffee…then we eat a hearty breakfast and go do more work, including home-schooling and house chores, we don’t sit on ass watching TV all day! 🙄
We need good hearty food to fuel our days, and one of the cheapest most nutritious of these is OATS! And oats are cheap, I buy organic rolled oats in 50 pound bags. The last time I bought some, about a month ago, it cost me $1.06/lb. I order all of my grains through a bulk food co-op that I am a member of through a church in a local town, I am not a member of the church though, it’s a service they provide to the community regardless of whether or not you attend, and I am very grateful for that!
So, here are my 3 favorite ways to eat oats for breakfast 😀
Traditional Oat Porridge (enough for 5 kids)
2 1/2 cups of oats
3 cups of filtered water
1/2 cup whey (I use whey leftover from making raw milk cheese, or you can drain it from yogurt)
12 hours before I plan to cook this I mix it all up in a pot and stick it in a warm place (at least 80F, I like using my oven with only the oven light on) for probiotics in the whey to do it’s “thing” in partially digest the oats and neutralizing phytic acid and other anti-nutrients that are present in all grains/seeds.
When I am ready to cook them I add:
2 cups milk from our goats
1/4 cup rapadura (whole cane sugar)
a dash each of salt, cinnamon, and vanilla extract
I then cook it all on med.-low heat, stirring every 3-5 minutes, until the oats are thoroughly cooked and the porridge is nice and thick. The secret to good porridge is to cook it s.l.o.w.l.y…it should take at least 20-30 minutes, 45 minutes is not out of the question. After it is done I stir in 1/4 cup (half a stick) of butter and let that melt. Then I serve it up in bowls garnished with raisins and/or chopped up banana. I also like to heat some of our goat’s milk on the stove till warm and pour it on there, and in early spring when we tap our maple trees a drizzle of homegrown maple syrup is pure heaven!
Another recipe that I often make is Oatmeal Pancakes ..it requires:
2 cups oats
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
3 cups buttermilk, preferably homemade with live and active cultures
Again, just like the recipe for Oat Porridge, I mix all of this together and let it soak in a warm place for at least 12 hours. When I am ready to make the pancakes I then add:
3 eggs (from our hens of course), well beaten
2 tbsp. olive oil or melted butter
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
dash of salt
I cook them on a greased griddle (I prefer a cast iron griddle greased with butter) just like regular pancakes. My favorite way to eat these is in early summer with fresh ripe strawberries (both wild and domestic) harvested from The Land 😀
And lastly comes my favorite “hot weather” oat recipe…I call it Nourishing Summer Oats, I did a blog post about it earlier in the year…click here.
Musings Of A Mountain Mama 
Wanted your opinion on something. I have an ovarian cyst. It is very troublesome and I want to heal it naturally rather than let the doctors cut me up and fill me with poisons. The problem is that everything I have found about healing it naturally says I need to switch to a vegan diet, because animal products are full of estrogen and that is the catalyst to the cyst growing. I am anti-vegan. Have you come across anything in your research that would help?
Ovarian cysts “feed” on excess estrogen and most of the hormones and antibiotics and chemicals in our environments all have an “estrogenic effect” on the body causing ovarian cysts and breast cancer etc. So it is best to stay away from commercially raised meat, but good ol’ fashioned home grown meat is fine imho. Also, body fat creates excess estrogen which would contribute to the cysts so losing any excess weight will also help. High sugar diets also contribute to it, but a high fat diet like The Optimal Diet that I’ve talked about before on this blog, would be very healing in such a situation. Most reproductive abnormalities can be traced back to a vitamin A or D deficiency, so taking cod liver oil, at least 1 tbsp. a day can only help the situation. Have you ever tried fasting? A raw milk fast would be very healing and help with losing any excess weight as well.
We have been on a sugar/yeast cleanse for about 6 weeks. I am highly lactose intollerant and was hoping a cleanse would allow me to consume raw milk again. My symptoms seem to be getting worse, but it could be the die-off. I have been taking cod liver oil as well as a natural progesterone since May to combat the estrogen overload, but I do not want to take it forever (the progesterone that is), so I need to get rid of the estrogen. I will have to look for the post on the Optimal Diet..and A and D can be covered by the diet I’m sure. Thanks!
My son and I happily eat our oats on the savory side. He likes his oats with salt and pepper adding a dash of jalapeno Tabasco sauce. I like chicken veggie oat soup. Adding garlic and onion powder. I am allergic to cows and goats milk so coconut or almond milk the replacement if I want milk. The oats make for a lovely creamy base. The occasional sweetened dish of oats porridge style happens but it is rare. Sweetened is the only way hubby will eat it tho.