Easy Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal

I have been work­ing on improv­ing myself 7 days at a time with a year of 7 Day Self-Improve­ment Chal­lenges. One of my goals for this year is to become more cre­ative with food. Anoth­er goal is to slow­ly cut meat out of my diet. I just don’t like the way it makes me feel after eat­ing meat. I have always been incred­i­bly off-bal­ance with the amount of fruits and veg­eta­bles I eat as well. Two sum­mers ago, I did a juice fast (which also includ­ed smooth­ies) and I felt alive at a cel­lu­lar lev­el. That’s my proof that I need to have a more bal­anced diet. For some peo­ple, salty food, like pota­to chips are a weak­ness, for me, it’s sweets. Espe­cial­ly choco­late. So, on my quest to get health­i­er, I want­ed a healthy alter­na­tive to my favorite dessert, peanut but­ter cup ice cream. I decid­ed to try a health­i­er fiber-filled alter­na­tive, choco­late peanut but­ter oatmeal.

Creativity Mania

I tend to have cre­ative phas­es, which is why these 7 Day Chal­lenges are so great for me. One week, I’m focused on art and the next, it’s pho­tog­ra­phy, or cook­ing. This week is a cre­ative cook­ing week. One idea leads to anoth­er and I have to try them all. After I made the choco­late chia pud­ding, I want­ed to see what else I could cre­ate. Then, I want­ed to see how I could make some­thing with as few ingre­di­ents as pos­si­ble (I made an elbow mac­a­roni pas­ta with just may­on­naise and a jar of olive/­sun-dried tomatoes/capers I found at Wal­mart. I could eat this every day!); now, I’m cre­at­ing health­i­er ver­sions of irre­sistible foods and desserts. This choco­late peanut but­ter oat­meal recipe has me think­ing about an Almond Joy type oat­meal next. And so it goes!

Cooking with a Twist

I am an out-of-the-box thinker when it comes to cook­ing. I always ask myself, “What else could go in this recipe and push the edge with­out going over?” For my choco­late peanut but­ter oat­meal, it was the addi­tion of rice.

Practice Makes Perfect

The one tweak I will have to make next time is using pre­cooked rice. It took so long to wait for the rice to fin­ish and I still was­n’t hap­py with cook­ing the rice in the oat­meal. So, the next time, I will just throw in some left­over rice. My theme was basi­cal­ly an oatmeal/ rice pud­ding. The fla­vor was spot on Reese’s Cup and it maybe could have been turned into a cold dessert; how­ev­er, it was deca­dent served warm.

Ingredients:

Caveat: In all my recipes, the ingre­di­ents are approx­i­ma­tions. Makes 4 servings.

1. 1 cup Slow-cook­ing oatmeal
2. 1/2 cup cooked rice
3. 2–3 Table­spoons peanut butter
4. 4 Table­spoons cacao pow­der (Here it needs to be adjust­ed to taste. I end­ed up adding more to get that Reese cup flavor.)
5. Sprin­kle of  cinnamon
6. 1 cup Milk of your choice (You may need to add more/ less depend­ing on how thick you like your pudding.)
7. 1 cup Water
8. Sweet­en­er (If you add it to indi­vid­ual serv­ings at the end, you use less.)

Directions:

1. Boil the water/ milk mix­ture. (Fol­low the direc­tions on the oat­meal box)
2. Once the oat­meal starts to thick­en, add the rice, peanut but­ter, cacao pow­der, cinnamon.
3. Cook on low for 10 more minutes.
4. Cov­er and turn off.
5. When ready to serve, add sweetener.

I ate this as a dessert after my cur­ry car­rot soup, prob­a­bly a very unortho­dox combination.

Check out my oth­er recipes. I am always adding more.