Date Oatmeal Porridge

My favorite winter breakfast. A bowl of nice, warm oatmeal porridge to warm up my day. Making oatmeal porridge is A simple, B cheap, C fast and D easy.

The little healthy thingy about the one I make is that it is sweet, yet there is no sugar involved. The secret ingredient, you ask? Dates.... dried dates. I love to use these little friends each time sugar is required in a recipe. Work especially well when cooking.

Some of you might have noticed that if you use honey in baking, the sweetness is somehow gone (or maybe I am just using a weird brand oh no-honey?)... Anyway, the sweetness of dates stays all the time. And only one date adds enough taste for a serving... But here it is, my daily fiber-shot:

DATE OATMEAL PORRIDGE

prep time: 10 minutes
serves: 2 hungry morning birds

• 1 cup soy milk
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup oatmeals
• 2 -3 dried dates
• pinch of salt
• (optional ingredients)
• vanilla pod
• cinnamon
• raisins
• dried fruits
• chopped nuts
  

Heat the soy milk in a cooking pan. Chop the dates finely and once the milk is warm, add them to the pan. Stir well, let the dates melt into the milk. Add the water and bring to boil. Lower the heat, add the oatmeals and salt. Stir well and turn off the heat. Cover the pan with a lid and let sit for 5 minutes. The oatmeals have absorbed the liquid and the porridge is now ready to be served.
I always add a bit of a treat on top, just to make it a bit different. My recently most favorite is dried cranberries, chopped hazel nuts and a slash of maple syrup... yum!

This one goes to the Garden Cook event. This months theme is cranberries. I only recently discovered these healthy berries, after getting sick with bladder infection. I found out that drinking cranberry juice helps a lot (and it actually did), so from then on, I always throw a couple of them to my breakfast meal.