Sideways Cottage...

I’ve never been much of an oatmeal fan, but I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of overnight oats. Recently, I came across a short video of a woman making them that got me thinking I might like them because the oats would be more al dente than… all mushy.

I used her recipe as a starting point and then consulted with Annie–an inveterate lover of oats. I tried 1/2 cup of oats per serving, 1 TBS of chia seeds, and 3/4 cup of soymilk at first, but it was WAY too much of everything and took me about an hour to eat. I then cut it down to 1/3 cup and it was still too much. After cutting the oats down to 1/4 cup, I tried adding various things until I came up with the most perfect combination of oats, nuts, seeds, fruit, and plant-milk.

For the past month, I’ve actually been batching four days worth at a time.

I eat my oats at about 11:30AM after our morning hour-and-a-half dogwalk, and I’m actually excited during the last half hour thinking about my delicious breakfast waiting for me in the fridge!

And I did indeed break down and buy those cute little overnight oats jars where you keep the nuts and seeds in a separate compartment so they don’t get soggy!

I do, however, mix the chia and flax seeds and dried goji berries into the wet ingredients because they need moisture to be edible.

These are the ingredients for four servings:

Perfect Overnight Oats

Divide into four jars:

1 cup rolled oats (1/4 cup for each jar)

4 tsp chia seeds (1 tsp for each jar)

4 tsp ground flaxseeds (1 tsp for each jar)

4 tsp dried goji berries (1 tsp for each jar)

Blend in the Vitamix until smooth:

2 cups soymilk (or other plant-milk)

2 medjool dates, pitted

Pour the soymilk-date mixture evenly into each of the four jars–1/2 cup into each–and mix well.

Add to each jar, but don’t mix:

1/4 cup frozen blueberries

Screw the top on the jar and refrigerate overnight. When serving, add to each jar:

1 tsp sunflower seeds

1 tsp pumpkin seeds

1 tsp hemp seeds

2 whole chopped walnuts (5 grams)

45 grams of vanilla soy, almond, or coconut yoghurt

1 banana

I hope you make these and look forward to your breakfast every day as much as I do (though I do tend to eat breakfast closer to noon than is proper!). It’s a hearty meal and takes me about twenty minutes or so to get through, so it keeps you full for hours!

Also, I recently read that people always, always underestimate how much they eat and overestimate how much they exercise, so I’ve been experimenting a bit with the Cronometer app. As such, I have the nutritional breakdown for the recipe!