I have recently learned the wonders of rolled oats and how easily they can be made into an excuse to eat half a container of cottage cheese. In about 10 minutes you too can eat a brick of slop instead of spending your hard earned dollars on boxes of cereal.
You need:
Rolled oats or steel cut oats. I haven't used steel cut but they're apparently the same thing but cook a little longer. Rolled oats are steamed and pressed (Well "Rolled")
Molasses, syrup or another sweetener unless you're a chad.
Freezer fruit, fresh fruit or something for flavor unless you're a chad
Milk (Water is gross and might make you hate this, start with milk)
Cottage cheese you don't need it but I love it.
The whole idea here is we're adding liquid to the oats to puff them up/make them chewable and digestible that's the core of it, I prefer milk as it makes them creamier. Beyond that you can literally do pretty much anything from stove top cast iron pan to microwave. Microwave makes the oats fluffier.
1. Grab your bag of freezer fruit and throw a good amount into a bowl, microwave until it's a steamy soupy mess. (I microwave around 3:40-3:50)
2. Grab your milk and sweetener and mix it together with the melted fruit (Molasses AND Maple Syrup preferred but you can get away with just molasses)
3. Slowly add oats and stir them in, it's easier to not make a mess if you slowly add them to the liquid mixture and it's easier to tell how much you need. The bowl should have some some liquid in it when you move the oats to the side, slightly soupy. You may want to taste test at this point and you might even realize you're plenty happy with how good uncooked rolled oats are. (Idk if you should eat steel cut oats raw though, rolled are fine.)
4. Microwave the oatmeal mixture for another 3:50, you will know it's getting close to done when it either makes a mess of your microwaves or starts looking puffy and soft.
5. Pull that stuff out of the microwave without burning yourself (Very hard) and stir, if the oats are dry splash some milk onto it but not too much or it makes it soup. If the oats aren't soft enough microwave them for another 30 seconds. The longer you microwave the sloppier it gets.
6. Top with copious amounts of cottage cheese.
If you're feeling adventurous google something akin to "Indian oats" or "Oats upma" and look at the mixtures on google images, you can make savory oats with stir fry vegetables and curry powder in a cast iron pan using the same principle of "add liquid and heat to make mush". Savory oats are a bit tricky though.
Oats are currently $4-5 for 4500 calories. mmmmmm
