Saturday, March 24, 2012

The Tesh




Homemade Instant Oatmeal (not a sandwich, but who cares)

Every morning before gently coaxing uplifting melodies from his piano, John Tesh has a bowl of oatmeal. He also has a beautiful wife to tenderly caress and a nationally syndicated radio program, so I bet some mornings he doesn’t have a ton of time to slow cook those steal cut oats.  But maybe John Tesh doesn’t know that you can make your own instant oatmeal. Quick-cooking oats, the kind you can buy from the bulk bins, are the same as instant oatmeal.  And when you buy all of your own ingredients and mix it up yourself, you end up with a far tastier product and can save yourself a little money too.

What you will need:

Plastic baggies (you can reuse them too!), a giant bag of quick cooking oats (depending on your preference you can buy organic, certified gluten free, etc.), salt, maple sugar* (or brown sugar), any number of toppings**.

1. Get out as many baggies as days you want to eat oatmeal.  I usually make about two work-weeks’ worth at a time, so for this example I’m going with 10 baggies.

2. Put one ¼ cup of quick cooking oats in each baggie.

3. Put one pinch of salt in each baggie

4. Put something sweet in each baggie
*I have been using maple sugar which you can usually find next to maple syrup at a fancy pants grocery store.  I like it because it is a whole food, and one serving (1 tablespoon) has only 8g of sugar in it, so it’s not too sweet.  This part of the process is pretty subjective depending on how sweet you like your oatmeal and how much sugar you want to consume.

5. Add in your toppings
**This is where shit gets as creative as the Tesh.  You can basically put whatever dried fruit or nuts you want in there.  Here are a few suggestions:

Cinnamon
Flax seeds
Roasted hazelnuts (chopped)
Dried apples
Raisins (duh)
Banana chips (or you can add fresh banana at the point of consumption)
Toasted walnuts (chopped)
Dried strawberries
Coconut flakes
Dates (chopped)
Okay, basically any dried fruit or nut you want.  You can also try those freeze dried fruits. I add about 1 tablespoon of each topping (except if its something like cinnamon) to each baggie. The hazelnuts are my favorite, btw.

6. Add in some more oats that you have ground up.  This step is optional, but highly recommended.  Take one tablespoon of oats for every baggie (so for this example, 10 tablespoons) and grind them up in a blender or coffee grinder.  Then put 1 tablespoon of this oat powder into each baggie.  This makes the oatmeal extra thick and creamy and amazing.

When it comes time to eat it, you can mix up this oatmeal just like you would any other instant oatmeal! You can add some water and microwave it, or you can boil some water and pour it in, just stir it up and wait a few minutes (maybe 4?)  I like the boil some water method, because at the same time you can make a cup of tea to go with it. Tesh would do it like that.

I put all my little baggies in a giant bag and keep them in my drawer at work, since I eat my oatmeal at my desk in the morning.  I also add one serving of pumpkin seed protein powder to my oatmeal when I mix it up, because I’m usually eating it after I work out at the gym.

Oatmeal can help you achieve anything! Check out the video below, with a full-length version of the NBA theme that Tesh wrote! (totally dig that Russian violinist)


1 comment:

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