Baked Oatmeal with Blueberries

A friend made a vegan version of this for a recent brunch. She substituted almond milk and a flax "egg," and it tasted great. For our normal use, I've gone ahead and made the non-vegan version. It's so good that this morning greedy me had two helpings.

This is a delightful and easy breakfast dish to make when you want something a little more interesting than just oats.

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 C old-fashioned rolled oats
• 1 t baking powder
• Dash of kosher salt
• Zest of 1 lemon
• 1/2 t nutmeg
• 2 T butter, melted and cooled
• 2 C whole milk
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/2 C sugar
• 2 C blueberries, fresh or frozen

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. 
2. Grease an 8” square baking dish.
3. In a medium bowl, combine the oats, baking powder, salt, zest, and spice. 
4. In a small bowl, whisk together the butter, milk, sugar, and egg.
5. Pour about half the dry mixture into the baking pan, then add half the blueberries. Add the remaining dry ingredients and top with the remaining blueberries.
6. Pour the wet mixture over the dry ingredients and blueberries; make sure the blueberries get covered.  
7. Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, or until the mixture is browned along the edges and the center has set up.
8. Enjoy!

Oatmeal Pancakes

Made with blueberries this time

This is another recipe from my mother. She sent it to me not long after my older son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and on my original recipe card, I wrote down all the diabetic exchanges. This was a nice treat to have as we tried to figure out what his disease meant to all our meals.

If you are watching your calories, try this trick with the maple syrup. Put 2 tablespoons on a plate and microwave briefly to heat up the syrup. Put your cooked pancakes on top of the syrup. You’ll have enough and won’t have ruined your calorie budget for the day.  Two tablespoons of maple syrup adds another 104 calories and ¼ cup of blueberries is another 20. Still, it's a reasonable and healthy breakfast.

Ingredients:
1 egg, beaten
1 C buttermilk
¾ C old fashioned oats
¼ C flour
½ t sugar
½ t baking soda
1 T wheat germ (optional)
¼ C chopped pecans (optional)
½ C blueberries (optional)

Directions:

• Heat a large non-stick skillet at medium-low on the stove.
• While the pan is heating, beat the egg and buttermilk together in a bowl. Add the oats and stir so that the oats are in the buttermilk/egg mixture. If you are using wheat germ, add the wheat germ to this mixture too.
• Combine the flour, sugar and baking soda together and mix well. When the pan is heated, spray it with cooking spray (VERY important) and then combine the dry ingredients with the buttermilk mixture in the bowl.
• Using a scant ¼ C, pour four pancakes and cook slowly until bubbles form and burst throughout the pancake. These pancakes need to cook slowly or else the oats won’t be done, so you may need to adjust the heat down a bit.
• Repeat for the second set of four pancakes, including the cooking spray.

Serves two