End of Summer - Start of Something New

It's popular to lament the end of summer, and I feel it too - there's something easy about summer, things seem less serious. But to me there's always something appealing with the start of fall. The air is fresh, the evenings get cosy and you can wrap yourself up in blankets and watch the rain falling outside. Or you can be outside and get rained upon, sometimes that really works. And, (bet you couldn't see this one coming) fall is the perfect season for porridge. Hearty, warming and full of taste. So welcome back after a long hot summer! We will be trying lots of new recipes and researching traditional ones. This season we're also hoping to check out some porridge recipes from different cultures and Linn-Sofie will be coming up with easy and healthy solutions for families with kids and precious little time and free hands. This sounds like a grand plan that will probably end up being a mix of everything in a more or less sensible order. Oh! And we're also bringing in some guest writers! If you have a great recipe that you want to share let us know!

R and I celebrated the last days of summer holidays with a trip down to Snohomish, a sweet little town outside Seattle that specializes in antique stores. We tried very hard to distinguish just old stuff from very awesome design features and useful retro but I'm still not quite sure what kind we ended up bringing home... The picture above is from lunch found at the First and Union Kitchen. Pretty basic but well made from scratch and not too heavy on milk. The oatmeal was served with dried cranberries and brown sugar, accompanied by some fresh fruit and jam on toast. Their pancakes are great too.. 

Fridge porridge!

Sounds crazy, maybe even weird. But really it's just a really smart idea: instead of just soaking some oats, you soak the whole recipe and just heat it up (or don't) in the morning. I found this idea on a great blog called The Oatmeal Artist. This girl is  p a s s i o n a t e  about oatmeal. She makes it in classic and wacky combinations, hot and cold, and takes stunningly beautiful pictures of her creations.

During the last couple of weeks I've tried a bunch of her fridge recipes (because that was such a great idea, I'm still going to try her regular ones too). I especially liked the Banana Cream Pie and the Lemon Drop. The first one I cooked on the stove for about 5 min and the other one I had cold. I recommend letting it stand for just a bit though, even if you're eating it cold, because at least for me it was a bit too well chilled to have straight out of the fridge.

Here's a copy of The Oatmeal Artists Banana Cream Pie Overnight Oatmeal:

"Ingredients (serves 1)

1/2 cup regular rolled oats

1/2 cup milk of choice

1 tsp chia seeds

1 overripe banana

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup plain or vanilla yogurt, such as SoDelicious (optional)

pinch of salt

Add the first three ingredients to a mason jar.

Mash up 2/3 of your banana and add to the jar. Slice the remaining 1/3 into the jar.

Add vanilla extract, optional yogurt, and salt. Put the cover tightly on the jar and shake, shake, shake.

Place in the fridge overnight. In the morning, you will have a delicious, dessert-like oatmeal ready and waiting for you!"

Now, whenever I find an exciting new recipe, two things play a big part in whether it'll become a favourite:

1. Can it be tweaked according to whatever ingredients I happen to have at home?
2. Is it EITHER so easy to remember OR so forgiving that I don't always have to look the recipe up?

For these recipes, the answer to both is yes. Yesterday I threw together a fridge porridge in a small container and it went pretty much like this:

some oats

some organic shredded coconut

two dried dates, chopped up small

sprinkling of a mix of chia, buckwheat and hemp cereal*

a pinch of salt

--> mix it all together, put in fridge overnight

in the morning, just warm it up in a pan and sprinkle som apple and basil on top (if you, like me, think that basil goes with everything), add milk if you feel like it

I call it The Coconut Date Throw-Together Overnight Oatmeal

The result was great. This type of recipe is definitely staying in my repertiore. Check out The Oatmeal Artist for lots of great recipes and ideas.

*yep, well, Vancouver is like the yoga capital of Canada so things like this make their way into your home almost on their own.