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Okay, so maybe it is not a big event but I do find it quite fun that someone designated January as National Oatmeal Month.

I love oatmeal so in honor of National Oatmeal Month I thought I’d share some of our favorite oatmeal recipes and uses.

At less than 55 cents a pound, oatmeal is a very budget friendly food. It also stores well and makes an easy item to add to our food storage.

For preparing oatmeal I try to follow the Weston A. Price guidelines for grains and soak them to help eliminate/reduce the phytic acid. However, I’ve read in a few different places that because rolled oats are heated during the processing time that soaking will not help. I don’t know if it does or doesn’t but I do find that after soaking rolled oats they cook up so much quicker and easier that I error on the soaking side not just for the possible benefits but for the ease in cooking. In fact, when my husband asked me to make oatmeal the other day ‘out of the blue’ I struggled as to how to make it without soaking! It didn’t turn out nearly as good as my soaked version.

My favorite ways to prepare Oatmeal

Breakfast

Basic Soaked Oatmeal Top with one or more of the following;

• Butter (always!)
• Honey
• Crispy Nuts
• Chopped fruit
• Fruit Relish (At the moment, this is my favorite relish recipe)
• Sunflower Seeds
• Coconut
• Sucanat/Rapadura
• Molasses
• Fruit Sauce/Syrup (Here is a nectarine syrup that I made which turned out good)
• Cinnamon/Nutmeg/other spices
• Raisins/other dried fruit
• finish with cream or milk

Butterscotch Oatmeal
Baked Oatmeal (this recipe, or this one, or this one are all good)
Oatmeal Pancakes
Oatmeal Fried Mush
Muesli

Oatmeal as a Budget Stretcher

Oatmeal works well as a way to stretch the budget not just as a breakfast meal but as an addition to other items.

One of our favorite breads uses oats in addition to the flour. Unfortunately, this bread is a nonsoaked yeast bread so we rarely have it but we sure do love it when we do. I recently read a book that shares a recipe for Oatmeal Bread that I plan to try  in the near future with some slight adaptations. The Oatmeal Bread recipe is in a book that is a free kindle (at time of writing) download Foods That Will Win the War and How to Cook Them (1918) by Alberta M. Goudiss and C. Houston Goudiss. There are several oatmeal recipes in this book plus lots of other interesting information.

I often add oatmeal to ground beef when needing to stretch the beef for meatloaf, meatballs or meatloaf patties.

Oatmeal for Dinner

Chicken Fried Dinner Patties

These are good! I originally found the recipe at Eat Wheat (a no longer active website) which is very good but the recipe doesn’t make enough for my family and for some reason doubling it didn’t result in the same flavor (not sure why). A different version that makes enough for our family is from The Prudent Homemaker, this is a thriftier version too using half the eggs as doubling the Eat Wheat recipe. I’ve been trying to perfect a soaked version (since I error on the soaking side as mentioned above) but haven’t been able to get the flavors right. Note: both recipes call for canned mushroom soup. I omit that and replace with homemade gravy.

Oatmeal for Dessert

I really like Oatmeal Raisin cookies. My children don’t and with the whole soaked oatmeal thing, I rarely make them.

I do make Granola Bars sometimes that use soaked and dried oats using this recipe from Lisa. They are very good. In fact, I really need to make them again in the near future in celebration of National Oatmeal Month of course.

No Bake Cookies are very popular in my house. We don’t make them as often these days as we used to and still make them the ‘quick’ way using regular unsoaked oats. I keep meaning to try this version from Wardeh but haven’t yet.

What are your favorite uses for oatmeal? Do you have any other ‘dinner’ ideas featuring oats?

Photo: Butterscotch Oatmeal