breakfast – Juanita Collins

Just a few minutes ago, I opened the fridge and took out a container of left over, steel-cut oatmeal. I’d made a batch the other day; it is my favourite dead-of-winter breakfast. Stomach grumbling, I spooned out a congealed glop, added a spoonful of honey, and poured a bit of milk over. After three minutes on reheat in the microwave, my bowl of oatmeal looked, smelled and tasted as good as it did when I spooned my first bite fresh out of the crock pot two days ago. Yes, I said crock pot!

I’ve posted this recipe before… I thought you might like to see it again. Bon Appetit!

Everybody seems to call these by a different name. I call them steel-cut oats. I’ve also heard them called Irish oats, or groats. Here’s what they look like:

Here’s the box they came in:

They are creamy and chewier than rolled oats, and have a rich, nutty flavour.

My friend Maureen gave me the recipe and I played around with it a little bit. Do you want to make some? They are easy-peesy!

Before you go to bed, get your small (I use a 6-cup) crockpot out of the cupboard and put 3 1/2 cups of water and 1/2 cup milk into it. Pour in 1 cup of steel cut oats.Put on the lid. Plug it in and turn the setting to low. When you get up in the morning, give it a good stir and let it sit for 5 minutes while you make your coffee. Enjoy!

You can add chopped apple, some walnuts or raisins right into the pot, whatever you like. I like mine plain with a teaspoon (okay, 2 teaspoons) of brown sugar. Sometimes I throw a handful berries on top just before digging in. Delish!

In a nutshell for you:
3.5 cups water
.5 cup milk
1 cup steel cut oats
6 -cup crock pot, on low overnight.Do you love oatmeal? What do you call them: Groats? Irish Oats? Steel-cut?

My goodness…I opened up the website to write a mother’s day post and saw that this will be post number 201! Now how did that upcoming milestone get past me, I wonder? I think I better start planning ahead a bit better because surely a prize would have been appropriate. Well, never say never, and I will put some thought into that!

Meanwhile, Happy Mother’s Day to everyone, whether you are a mother or not! I have had a wonderful Mother’s Day. Look what I was served for breakfast!

I adore French toast. And didn’t he set a beautiful table, oh my! I must have raised him very well, if I don’t say so myself!

Chef Michael:

And on the sewing front, I picked up Heidi’s quilt for the first time in too long and did some hand quilting whilst we watched a movie on TV last night.

Yesterday I worked on my 3×6 bee blocks. I decided to make disappearing 9-patches this time around. Sometimes I feel badly that I make such simple blocks for this group, but everyone makes the best of their ability, and you are placed in a group by first-come, first-served. So there are very experienced quilters making some very advanced blocks in the group, and then there are the beginner “me’s” who make simple blocks. So anyway, I felt that the disappearing 9-patch was going to be a challenge – and it was, but in a different way than I had expected. The challenge wasn’t in the sewing, it was in the fabric selection. A couple of the blocks I made over because while the colours looked like they would be perfect, when the block was actually sewn, they just didn’t cut it.

So what is a disappearing 9-patch, all my non-quilting friends are wondering? Well, you start off by sewing a straight-ahead 9-patch block that looks like this:

Then you cut it into quarters, like this:

And then you twist and turn the quarters around until you like the pattern!

Pretty cool, eh?

What I learned is that strong colours work best, especially a contrasting colour in the center of the original 9-patch. All of these squares are the same pattern, and the colours I used are according to the chosen palette of each person in the bee. See what you think: