Love Of Oats

A blog dedicated to balancing a healthy and fun life… with oats!

Daily Archives: October 11, 2008

Pumpkin Spice Oatmeal

Although this isn’t anything new for me (or for most of you bloggers for that matter), I thought I’d post how I make my variation on the ever-popular “Pumpkin Spice Oatmeal“… Even though the temperature is in the 70′s (what happened to the Fall weather we had last week?!  I’m not complaining though…), I still felt like having an autumn-like breakfast today…

INGREDIENTS:

  • 1/2 cup oatmeal
  • 1/4 cup canned pumpkin (unsweetened)
  • 1 heaping tbsp sliced almonds
  • TONS of cinnamon
  • 1 tbsp ground flax
  • splash of vanilla extract
  • drizzle of maple syrup

DIRECTIONS:

  • Over a stovetop, pour oats and 1/2 cup of water, stirring over medium to high heat (you can duplicate this in the microwave as well)
  • When water begins evaporating and oatmeal reaches desired consistency, add in pumpkin stirring well until heated through
  • Pour in liberal amounts of cinnamon, stirring well (I feel that cinnamon in oats tastes MUCH better if it is cooked and NOT sprinkled on AFTER cooking)
  • Add splash of vanilla extract, stirring well (again :) )
  • Remove from stove and pour into bowl
  • Drizzle with maple syrup (optional) and top with sliced almonds and ground flax
  • Enjoy your fall-in-a-bowl oats!

Jamaican Jerk Chicken & Pasta

Yeah, mon :)

While we were reminiscing memories of our honeymoon which occurred almost a month ago, I decided to try my hand at attempting one of the dishes we ate at the “Beach BBQ” our first night there:  Jamaican Jerk Chicken and Pasta.  We both can’t believe that it’s been almost a month since we got married (4 weeks exactly today although our “real” 1st month anniversary occurs on Monday!  So far, I don’t think it’s hit us that we’re actually married haha :)   Anyway, back to the recipe, here’s the breakdown…

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup rotini whole wheat pasta
  • 1 cup tomato sauce
  • 1/2 Jamaican BBQ Jerk Sauce (we used Island Spice)
  • 8 ounces chicken breast, cut into pieces
  • S+P

Directions:

  • Mix tomato sauce and jerk sauce together until combined well.  Separate sauce into two portions.
  • Place chicken in oven-safe casserole dish and pour 1 portion of tomato sauce/jerk sauce mixture over top stirring well.  Let sit for 30 minutes (as a marinade).
  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees
  • Place chicken in oven and bake for 20-30 minutes, consistently stirring and flipping to ensure even cooking.  Check to ensure that chicken is fully cooked before removing from oven (your oven temp may differ from mine).
  • While chicken is baking, boil water for pasta.  When you have a rolling boil, add pasta noodles and boil until al dente or desired result.
  • Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, heat 2nd portion of sauce mixture to warm
  • Strain pasta and serve onto plate.  Place baked chicken on top and divide 2nd portion of warmed sauce on top.  Season with salt & pepper.
  • Enjoy!

This dish was a wonderful treat for Bill and I as we absolutely love jerk sauce and seasoning.  However, if you are not a huge fan of hot/spicy foods, you may want to scale back the amount of jerk sauce you use because ours was very hot.  Bill had to get up and keep getting additional glasses of water :)