Years ago, after I learned that not eating breakfast was apparently compromising my longevity, I started waking up at 6:30 every morning in order to extend my life. At the time, my breakfast of choice was one of these convenient little packets…

Since I hated eating breakfast anyway, choking down instant oatmeal was as easy as choking down anything else, and I thought I was being healthy because…oatmeal!! One fine day, I happened to look (bleary eyed) at the ingredients (not a regular practice at that time) and realized exactly how much sugar each packet contained. I quit those little packets posthaste and retained a healthy disgust of oatmeal since that time.

I do like oats though (in cookies and muffins, anyway), so this morning I tried a breakfast of fruit, sweet cashew cream, pecans, and about a quarter cup of raw oats. It was delicious! Apparently, oats don’t need to be cooked into a big mushy mess!!

Sweet Cashew Cream

Pour boiling water over cashews, let soak for fifteen minutes, and strain. Then put all the ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth:

• 1 cup of soaked cashews
• 1 cup water
• 3 TBS maple syrup
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

And here’s breakfast: a fruit salad, topped with a quarter cup of whole oats, a couple of tablespoons of the cashew cream, pecans, and crunchy coconut chips…

…and, eventually, a handful of dried cranberries (because it needed something chewy…oh, and cranberries are good for you!):

It was so delicious that it tasted like dessert!!

And here’s the even healthier version–with pumpkin and sunflower seeds.

According to Dr. Michael Greger, not eating nuts and seeds is the third leading cause of death and disability in the world! Apparently, the equivalent of a handful of nuts/seeds (about a quarter cup) five days a week will do it. Indeed, two long-running Harvard Medical School studies indicate that “…people who ate nuts every day lived longer, healthier lives than people who didn’t eat nuts,” said study co-author Dr. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. The report, in  New England Journal of Medicine, showed that daily nut-eaters were less likely to die of cancer, heart disease, and respiratory disease. Overall, the daily nut-eaters were 20% less likely to have died during the course of the study than those who avoided nuts. (Peanuts, which are actually legumes, counted as nuts in this study).”