oatmeal and bananas

This morning, like so many others, I found my sleep deprived pre-coffee self struggling with what to feed my monkeys.  Normally, well I should say on school mornings, my daughter sleeps in.  This leaves me plenty of time to quietly and peacefully make french toast, scrambled eggs, pancakes, or other nourishing healthy breakfasts with enough time before school.

On the weekends, however, my daughter wakes up at the crack of dawn.  Forget for a moment that last night, my husband and I went out to see an old friend's band have their first show together in 15 years.  Forget that we didn't pick up the kids from grandma's until midnight.  The kids had fallen asleep at 930, but they both woke up after midnight.  If that had happened on a school day, she would have been impossible to wake up.  But it being Sunday, she woke up at 630.

When the kids wake up before I do, making a good breakfast is a bit more difficult.  They are hungry.  And trying to make a good breakfast while both kids are wide awake and hyper and whining and jumping on the couch and pointing scissors at each other just doesn't work for me.  Those are the days when they get cereal or toast, or even a spoon of peanut butter and peach cup, but I do try to get in as many healthy breakfasts as I can.

This morning, as I had mentioned before, was a crack of dawn morning.  But fortunately, my son was still asleep.  Those days aren't so bad.  My daughter usually is more reliable when she is running around solo.  Unfortunately, I had only gotten 5 hours of sleep, my head was thick from the previous night's whiskey (that's right- the ONE whiskey gave me a hangover), it was pre-coffee, and my eyes were struggling to stay open.  That's when I found the oats.

In my September Savorfull box, I received a bag of Bob's Red Mill Steel Cut Oats, and that made for the perfect Sunday morning breakfast.  Oatmeal is so easy to make.  For three servings, put three cups of water to boil, add one cup of the steel cut oats, give it a stir, set the heat to low, and simmer away for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Voila!  Easy peasy.  While it was cooking, and instead of taking a nap which would have been just way too irresponsible......  I found a banana.

I used to sauté bananas almost every day.  Mm mmm.  Just heat up some butter on medium high to high heat (or dairy free butter over here), slice up a banana into the sizzling butter, sprinkle on some cinnamon, and with a flick of the wrist, flip the pan to coat and stir the bananas.  We have these great eco-friendly nonstick pans that are very lightweight- I bought them from Target a few years ago and I L O V E them.  I always feel like such a pro when I flip the food around in those pans....

Anyway, I like to let the bananas sit for a spell in the hot butter so that the edges get nice and crispy.  You want to take them out before they get mushy- it only takes about 3 to 5 minutes.  The bananas pictured here were cooked in a pan that wasn't quite hot enough, and I didn't take them off soon enough.  So they got a bit mushy.  But they were so beautifully carmelized and delicious, it really didn't matter at all!