Waffles and a Wrap

When Hubby goes out of town Babes and I almost always have breakfast for dinner.  I love breakfast, but Babes' 6:55am bus means that most mornings it's oatmeal from the crockpot, a bagel, or cheerios.  There is almost no way that I am ever going to be coherent enough in the morning to make waffles, pancakes, or anything like that.  She might get French toast or a scrambled egg, but that's a rare occasion.  So my solution is to have breakfast for dinner, but this is a love that hubby does not share, so we do it when he's out of town...
Which brings me to one of my favorite Christmas presents--my campfire (or stovetop) waffle maker.

 It's cast iron, and it sits on top of the range so I don't have to worry about plugs, or transformers or anything, I just heat it up on the eye and enjoy yummy yummy waffles.

And you know, of course, that my favorite waffle recipe would have to include oatmeal.  Because really, what food is not improved by some good old fashioned oatmeal?  I actually ran out of oatmeal (*GASP*) while making the waffles and I subbed in some of my leftover crock pot oatmeal and decreased some of the milk and they still turned out awesome.  (I would normally just link to the recipe, but I can't find it on Allrecipes.com anymore so here it is)

Oatmeal Waffles

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Ingredients

• • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup quick-cooking rolled oats
  • 1 tablespoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 2 eggs, slightly beaten
  • 1 1/2 cups milk
  • 6 tablespoons butter, melted
  • 2 tablespoons brown sugar

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• 1. In large mixing bowl, stir together flour, oats, baking powder, cinnamon and salt; set aside. In small mixing bowl, stir together eggs, milk, butter and brown sugar. Add to flour mixture; stir until blended. Pour batter on to grids of preheated, lightly greased waffle iron (amount will vary with size of waffle iron). Close lid quickly; do not open during baking. Use fork to remove baked waffle. Top with fresh fruit and yogurt.

Also, remember my the leafy scarf that I was working on? Well, it's finished blocked and ready for wear.  It turned out really well, I just wish I had more yarn so I could have made it wider and longer.  It makes a pretty fancy scarf, but I think it would make a smashing wrap.  (yes I said smashing!) 

 PS-it's a real pain in the butt to try to take a picture of your back by yourself.  I know I should have just pulled out my camera and remote, but if you know which box they are in, please let me know! (also after all that work, the scarf is on inside out!)

Leftover Oatmeal Carrot cake muffins

Hmm... In an effort to make something other than the usual leftover oatmeal muffins I tried to come up with something different. So I decided to make carrot cake muffins.

1 cup leftover oatmeal
2 eggs
1/4 Cup butter (I actually used 3 Tbsp butter, 1 olive oil)
1 Cup grated carrot
1/2 Cup finely chopped pineapple
1/2 Cup raisins
1 Tsp Vanilla
1 Cup flour
1/2 Cup brown sugar
1 Tsp baking soda
1 Tsp baking powder

I mixed the wet ingredients together and the dry ingredients together then mixed the two together and put them in mini muffin pans. These took forever to bake though maybe 30 minutes at 350, and they were still a little too moist (for my taste), and I don't think I cut the pineapple small enough. But DD and DH loved them so I will try them again grating/cutting everything smaller. No picture this time, but they look a lot like the other muffins....

Whole Oat Groats

So in an effort to post more often I'm going to start adding some regular slice of life moments that are slightly different because I'm overseas, or maybe regular things that I wouldn't normally do but that I'm doing because I'm overseas. Did that make any sense? No? Well, since no one really reads this, it's ok.

We were in the grocery store last week and I came across these:

They are whole oat groats. Basically it's oatmeal in the most natural state that I've seen it in. To be honest it looks a little like rice. Babes LOVES oatmeal so I've been looking for steel-cut oats here so that she can have porridge in a crock pot (which she loves) instead of so much of the instant stuff. In case you don't know the steel cut oats look like this:

After a lot of internet searching I found a basic recipe of 1 part oats to 4 parts water. Which is very close to the way the steel cut oats are made so I decided to do them the same way. I put a little bit of water in the inside of the bowl to my crock pot, then I took a glass mixing bowl and put it in the water, and I mixed together 1 cup of oats and 4 cups of water, put the lid on, turned my crock pot on low, then went to bed. When we woke up the oatmeal was done and viola!

Which I have to say looks gross when you do a close up shot, but was actually quite tasty! The oatmeal is firmer and not nearly as gooey as the instant stuff. I am definitely convinced that this is the way to go. Tomorrow.... Leftover Oatmeal muffins!