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photo: State Library of New South Wales via Flickr
There doesn’t seem to be a single item that is generally accepted as a breakfast food that has not been tricked up in some way to resemble dessert. Commercial muffins today have as much sugar as cupcakes; pancakes are offered today with everything from chocolate chips to those fake dried blueberries in them made from high fructose corn syrup. The humble egg seems so far to be immune but only because they haven’t figured out how to sell the idea that they can make a fruit- or jam-enhanced omelet. Recently it came to my attention (because your dear Auntie hovers over food news like some sort of vulture) that Micky D’s, in its ever expanding efforts to appear to be providing food that has some nutritional benefit, is offering oatmeal on its menu. Well, obviously others find the combination of McDonald’s and oatmeal to be bordering on the “kosher bacon” example, and nutritionists and writers went at it with hammer and tongs (or fork and spoon as you prefer):
Here is the nutritional analysis of what is being offered at the restaurants. Please take note of the amount of sugar in a serving here: 31 grams of sugar (and 5 grams of protein). This is as much as a Snickers or Hershey’s chocolate bar. See nutritional info, Mickey D’s oatmeal.
The New York Times lit in with their opinion, noting basically how worthless this item is, at $2.38 a serving and pointing readers to the next site where the writer made up his OWN versions of packeted oatmeals, complete with dried genuine blueberries, etc. for what ended up being less than 30 cents per packet. Read more at NYTimes MD oatmeal.
Here, check out this: Cost Analysis – Make Your Own Packet Oatmeal
Now, Aunt Toby loves oatmeal. I can rationalize eating oatmeal in any form, at any time, whether it’s oatmeal cookies (with or without dried fruit, nuts, and/or chocolate chips), meatloaf, oat bread, or plain ol’ oatmeal. All by itself, oatmeal is in the ‘damn good’ range of nutritional items. All by itself, just made up with plain old water, it has 1 gram of sugar, 8 grams of fiber and 11 grams of protein. That’s without the addition of anything with protein in it. Once you throw on a little milk, yoghurt, soy milk, nuts, etc. the protein content just soars. And ONE GRAM OF SUGAR. ONE GRAM. UNO. ONE MORE THAN ZERO! Not 31, not 15, not 10. 1. Even if you threw on a teaspoon of sugar, that would only add 4.5 grams of sugar to the bowl of oatmeal. Hello? That’s a total now of between 5 and 6 grams of sugar. Not 31. Here’s the nutrition info on regular oatmeal.
I think everyone who reads me on a regular basis gets the impression that I am NOT a fan of America’s food processors. Nothing could be closer to the truth; it certainly seems to me that there are people in those businesses who are hell bent on poisoning and killing off everyone they can lay their hands on. And I especially resent the ‘pop-tartization’ of breakfast food which should literally be the plainest and more nutritious stuff we give our families on a daily basis. “Oh,” they say, “American families demand convenience.”
OK, bud. I’ll give you convenience. . . .
Oatmeal, Aunt Toby’s way (feeds 3):
Requires:
Oatmeal (the thicker cut the better but the old fashioned rolled oats will do; no one needs to go to Ireland for their oatmeal)
Sauce pan with tightly fitting lid
Directions:
Put one cup of oatmeal in the pan.
Put two cups of water in the pan.
Put on stove and bring to a boil – this takes all of 5 minutes on my stove.
Put on lid. Turn off the heat.
Leave five minutes.
Serve with whatever you like.
OK, so what’s so inconvenient about THAT? What can you do with that five minutes?
Fix your hair.
Fix a sandwich for your kid to take to school with a piece of fruit and some cut up carrots.
Make sure your kid is wearing their coat and boots AND has their boots and sneaks for school. If this is being done at the last minute white the kids are screaming, “The bus is coming!!!”, throw the kiddies’ oatmeal into some sort of container with some nuts, cinnamon, sugar (if they absolutely require it), a splash of milk or some a tsp of dried milk). Put that into their packs with a spoon and a paper napkin and send them off. They can eat this (and my kids did many times) on the bus. A hot freakin’ breakfast on the damn bus. And they are ready for school.
Five minutes, Mr. Whiteside. Five minutes.
Mickey D’s should be ashamed.
17 Comments
The idea of oatmeal at McD’s is sickening. I like oatmeal on a cold winter night – warms me all the way through. Thanks, Toby.
Sickening in more ways than one. One of the truly health giving benefits of oatmeal all by itself is the combination of protein and fiber that it has, which is very calming to blood sugar. Oatmeal, plainly made, has a glycemic index of 32. Putting 31 grams of sugar into it basically cancels out any nutritional benefit it has. Mickey D’s oatmeal is ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ food.
I cook my steel-cut oats in my rice maker. Use the same rule of thumb as for most whole grains — one cup of grain to every two cups of water. A pinch of salt, a dash of real vanilla extract, press COOK and away you go. Add a little dried fruit as desired with a scant dash more water in equal measure.
In fact a morning here is pretty smooth when it’s steel-cut oatmeal for breakfast.
– Measure out ground coffee/water and oats/water the night before;
– Coffee ready at 6:30 a.m. (use the timed brew feature), get a cup first;
– Add pre-measured ingredients to the rice cooker, press COOK;
– Take shower, do hair;
– Oatmeal ready – read the news and eat breakfast.
Exactly. The whole ‘convenience’ factor is a mystery to me.
Thanks for a good read. These days, any food not topped with a sugary sauce is likely swimming in a cheese sauce. In some restaurants, nearly every dish is heavily sauced. This strikes me as an admission that the underlying food is of poor quality and needs a disguise to trick customers into eating it. In response, I rarely eat out anymore.
I was always more of a Cream of Wheat kinda kid than I was oatmeal – (since that was what my Gran served us often.
but nowadays with my vast amounts of “free” time, I just make bacon, eggs, and hashbrowns (or grits), or SOS of some sort
Every once in a while I have a hankering for Cream of Wheat or Cream of Rice. And once in a while, CoCoWheats. Yum.
I used to not mention that I just poured boiling water over organic rolled oats; added nuts or sunflower seeds, plus dried fruit & some butter or tahini, and enjoyed.
Really fast! Delightfully chewy! No saucepan to wash up! No oats wasted being stuck on the pan!
Then I learned that the Scots not only prepared oats that way, they had a word for it: brose. There’s even an old tune called Brose and Butter.
So it’s not only convenient, it’s celebrated.
Oh, a little sea salt, and nutmeg or cinnamon, don’t come amiss, either.
I’ll admit to using microwaveable multi-grain cereal (Kashi-go-lean hearty and a couple of lesser-known cereals from Red Engine/Better Oats). I used to get the hot cereal cups from the Spice Hunter, which also were multigrain. Single-grain cereals aren’t as interesting to my taste buds.
Savory Oatmeal asian style:
Who needs stinkin’ sugar in their oatmeal?
To 1 serving of cooked oatmeal add:
2 tsp soy sauce
1/4 to 1/2 tsp sesame oil
dash of sriracha
Mix. Top with crushed peanuts and a Tbs of chopped scallion.
Serious style points for the “Bend It Like Beckham” use of appliance. :-)
Here you go … “St. Kilda Wedding/Brose & Butter – Aladsdair Fraser & Natalie Haas (Fire & Grace)”
I am willing to try that but your recipe makes me want Pad Thai instead.
The same in a pan with hot water and a stirring instrument called a “spurtle.” It is a long, wood tool to stir oatmeal. Cook, reheat next morning in the microwave in portions. Yum!
I like my oatmeal with a fresh apple chopped in and some raisins. Add a pinch of brown sugar and … yum.
Organic steel cut oats: eat for breakfast most every day. At work, use a deep cereal bowl, cover the bottom with luscious nuggets of steel cut oats, fill bowl with hot water, place in micro. The secret is to use the DEFROST
To complete the thought, the micro in my office has a “weight defrost” function. Set weight at 9, then defrost. Cooks in about six minutes without overflowing the bowl: any other setting suffer the molten lava overspilling the rim. When the buzzer rings, take back to desk and cover for a few minutes, add fruit, etc. Excellent.
Been doing this for more than a year now, and my cholesterol came down from a danger to a safe level — thanks to OATMEAL, I am sure (and daily exercise, copious amounts of red wine, etc.).
The steel cut, I believe, really soaks up liquid, and once past your stomach, the gift from the gods sucks up impurities, scours your insides, and makes you regular as all get up and go.
(only problem is afternoon gaseousness — heard tell can reduce that by soaking next morning’s oatmeal overnight in water with a touch of orange juice.)