Easiest Overnight Oats & Blueberry Nice-Cream

This is my easiest overnight oats recipe and the boys love it! Just 4 ingredients pack in fiber, whole grains, protein, and calcium. Layer with fruit and/or 5 minute blueberry nice-cream and you have a beautiful breakfast to-go! The twins love to help "design" their own jars in the mornings. 

Ingredients

Oatmeal: 

1 banana

1 cups old-fashioned oats

1 cup milk of choice

2 Tbs almond butter

Nice-Cream:

1 banana

1 cup blueberries

1-4 Tbs milk of choice

1/2 cup spinach leaves (optional)
                                                                                                         

Before Bed

1. Peel and freeze 1 banana and 1 cup of blueberries.

2. In a medium bowl, mash another banana with almond (or another nut) butter. 

3. Add 1 cup oats and 1 cup milk. Stir, cover, and refrigerate.

In the Morning

1. Remove oatmeal from fridge and stir.

2. Slice frozen banana and place in blender with frozen blueberries.

NOTE: You can also add in 1/2 cup of torn spinach leaves to add a veggie!

3. Begin blending and add 1-4 Tbs milk as needed. Mixture will be grainy at first. Keep blending as it will eventually turn creamy and smooth!

4. Layer oatmeal, nice cream, and fresh fruit as desired. Breakfast in minutes!

Baked Oatmeal: "Polynesian Wedding Cake" Style

Baked oatmeal is a lovely dish because it is a blank canvas that can support so many different flavor combinations! It also makes a wonderful brunch dish, in my opinion, because of its heartiness and ability to be completely prepped the night before.

Baked Oatmeal: "Polynesian Wedding Cake" Style

1 cup old fashioned oats

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ginger powder

1/4 tsp salt

2 Tbs chia seeds

2 cups coconut (or other plant-based) milk

1/2 cup orange juice

1 Tbs maple syrup

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup shredded carrots

1 cup diced pineapple

1/2 cup diced mango

1/2 mashed banana (about 1/4 cup)

2 Tbs chopped nuts

2 Tbs raisins

Coconut flakes for topping

Steam carrots with a little water in a medium saucepan until soft. (The bake time later will not be long enough to cook them otherwise.) Drain.

Back in the saucepan, combine carrots with chia, oats, and spices and stir. Add liquid ingredients and stir well to combine. Measure in fruit and nuts and then cook over medium heat, stirring frequently until thickened. (About 10 minutes).

Pour into a standard pie dish and either
1. Cover and refrigerate to bake in the morning, or
2. Preheat oven to 350 degree and bake for 20 minutes. 

If you refrigerate, you will need to set oatmeal out in the morning to come to room temperature or bake it an extra 10 minutes.

Top oatmeal with coconut flakes and broil, if desired, on low for 2 minutes to toast.
My toddlers do NOT like the coconut. It has the utter audacity to be cwunchy.

Peaches 'n' Cream Blackberry Cobbler Oats

Ever since we discovered that you can blend spinach into milk for overnight oats and not taste the difference, we have been all about "Emerald Oats" (as my husband coined them) around the DeMarco house! The magic ratio is:

1/2 cup packed spinach per 1 cup plant milk

So that said, even though the color of this insta-breakfast is green the flavor is that of a pleasantly toned-down cobbler. I grew up a Georgia girl so peaches were always ripe and succulent in the summer, tempting us in little farmer's stands along the back country roads. And then blackberries. Well, blackberries grew wild everywhere. Safe to say, I enjoyed my fair share of peach-blackberry pie with a brown sugar and oat streusel on top. It seemed the natural route to go with oatmeal as well!

3 packed cups spinach

3 cups old fashioned oats

2 cups walnut (or other) milk

2 cups peach juice (or water but up the syrup)

6 Tbs chia seeds

3 Tbs (or to taste) maple syrup

2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp cinnamon

2 peaches, diced

1 cup black berries, halved

serves 5-6

1. Blend spinach in milk for 3 minutes on high.
2. combine all ingredients, cover, and set in fridge overnight.
3. For toppings you can go healthy and add buckwheat crips for texture ... or you can lean towards sweeter and top with a granola "streusel". A dollop of coconut whip cream wouldn't be a bad idea either!

Key Lime Easy Oats (with shh! spinach)

Today is the much anticipated LIBRAY DAY at our little house. The boys are eagerly gathering up our pile of books as I type, so this post will be short and sweet. We eat overnight oats at least four breakfasts a week, so I've been looking for a way to sneak in vegetables without ruining the flavor (or  the toddler enthusiasm). I finally found it! And - just because I hardly believe it myself - here they are. Eating spinach for breakfast.

After weeks of brainstorming, I finally got smart and took a hint from smoothie successes. The key to this recipe resides in these three little tips that I've shared before.

• Color Match - if the oatmeal is going to be green, I'd better have a darn good excuse. Flavoring the oats with lime juice and zest gives a plausible (if you're three-years-old) reasons for them to be green.
• Add Acid - again, the lime comes in handy. Citrus is adept at masking any subtle earthy flavor from greens. 
• Blend, Baby, Blend - hell hath no fury like a toddler who just detected a noticeable piece of spinach in their "sweet" breakfast (or smoothie). Run the blender on high for at least three minutes.

Without further ado - the recipe:

Key Lime Easy Oats (with shhh! spinach)

4 cups spinach

3 1/2 cups almond milk

3 cups old fashioned oats

1/4 cup vanilla protein powder (optional)*

Zest of 1 lime
3 Tbs lime juice (optional)**

3 Tbs chia seeds
3 Tbs maple syrup (or other sweetener)

Fruit for topping (pineapple, strawberries, and mango all go well)

Toasted coconut (optional)
Extra maple syrup for drizzling

1. In a blender, combine milk and spinach on high until spinach is not visible to the discerning child's eye.

2. Combine with all the other ingredients except toppings. Cover and refridergate overnight.

3. In the morning, portion oats out and layer or top with fruit of choice. Add a sprinkle of unsweetened coconut and drizzle of maple syrup if desired. Enjoy!

Serves 6

*If the idea of tart oats bothers you, I tasted the oatmeal after adding just the lime zest alone and was pleased. My kids have always like sour things though and enjoyed the added lime juice.
**We use a protein powder sweetened with stevia. If omitting, decrease liquid by 1/4 cup and add 1 tsp vanilla and 1-2 Tbs sweetener of choice. 

Hidden Veggie Spaghetti Sauce

I still remember the day when, as a newlywed, I first read the nutrition label on the back of a can of spaghetti sauce:

Ten grams of sugar in 1/2 a cup!

And, let's be honest. Rarely did I eat just half a cup. I am a drown-your-noodle-spaghetti-sauce-soup, kind of girl. There were some pricey, sophisticated sauce options with lower sugar contents, but I was trying to budget for a move and a house and future children so I barely gave them a glance.

Ten ... errrr, 20 ... grams of sugar for me it was.

Fast forward a few years. Now that we have kids, I just can't justify putting that much sugar on their dinner plates and we still can't afford the pricier brands. Solution? Make my own spaghetti sauce! I set out to come up with a good red sauce recipe with three thoughts in mind:

1. It would need to be mild in taste because garlic wards off toddlers almost as well as it fends off vampires.
2. It should incorporate several vegetables because - again - "O" and his whole "no carrots" deal.
3. Also, could it pack in at least a little protein? Don't get me wrong! Some nights, when the banshees small children have worn me down to a skeleton of who I was 12 hours earlier, "noodles + tomatoes" sounds like a well-balanced meal. But, I could probably give at least a polite nod to protein with this sauce.

Here is the end result! It is thick and creamy with a color resembling vodka sauce. There is a good note of sweetness from carrots, easy on the garlic and pepper, and a few lentils tossed in for good measure. The marjoram is a softer, sweeter alternative to oregano (which some children find to sharp in flavor). And if you needed one more bonus for this awesome sauce - it freezes GREAT!

1/2 onion, diced

1 clove of garlic, minced

1 cup carrots, chopped

1 cup grape tomatoes

1 approx. 14 oz can of diced tomatoes and juices

1/4 cup lentils

1 1/4 cups broth
2 Tbs tomato paste
1 Tbs olive oil

1 tsp dried basil

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp tarragon

1/2 tsp onion powder

1/4 tsp majoram

1/4 tsp fennel

1/8 - 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

Sweat the onion, garlic, and carrots with a drizzle of olive oil + 1/4 teaspoon salt. Once the onions become translucent, add the rest of the ingredients and simmer on low - the longer the better! I like to make this during nap time when I know we will not be going anywhere while the baby sleeps. When baby is tired, everyone is tired. I simmer for 2 hours then set aside to reheat for dinner.

Makes enough for 1 box of spaghetti.