Who Said Beige Was Boring?

Liking oatmeal has been a long-time coming. At first I was intimidated by the process of making the homemade version thinking that it took a long time to prepare and involved considerable effort. If five minutes is too long and an occasional stir is too much then yes, my preconceived nothings are correct, but luckily I've found that neither is too taxing for me. Also, having never had homemade oatmeal I detested the gritty texture I'd become accustomed to with the prepackaged kind. That changed when I visited the Original House of Pancakes in Chicago. It's a chain I'd fallen hard for when living in South Carolina and was happy to discover that The Beanpole also loved in North Carolina. The waitress brings out a huge bowl of creamy oatmeal accompanied by raisins, brown sugar, and lovely little pitcher of cream.

I thought about cooking an egg this morning to make sure that I started off with more flavor and texture but went back to the oatmeal. As usual I topped it with the leftover half of banana, a little bit of granola, and flax, but after yesterday's lack of texture I decided to add some golden raisins and a few slivered almonds. This made all the difference. YUM!


I like to spread the raisins and bananas around the edge so I can add a little to each bite!