My Oatmeal Review

Oatmeal is such a great thing!! It's super healthy and so versatile.  You can eat a bowl of it for breakfast and you can bake all sorts of yummy treats with it! Cookies, bars, muffins... I got the opportunity to volunteer to do a review for a great oatmeal company. Free oatmeal?! Sign me up! The company is called MyOatmeal.  They have such a great concept.  You go online and create your very own oatmeal flavor! Every order is custom made.  Any flavor you can think of, you can make! Seriously! S'mores, apple pie, blueberry cheesecake, oatmeal raisin cookie, double fudge peanut butter brownie, and so many more!

I kept it somewhat simple and ordered carrot cake and red velvet cake.

These are huge bags by the way! Each bag has 11+ servings.  The ingredients list is super simple. Oats and natural flavors.  

You can add basically anything to your own order.  Dried fruit, nuts, seeds, and sweeteners.  You can also choose between quick oats, 5 grain rolled oats and flax, steel cut oats, smash blend oats, gluten free, and organic gluten free thick rolled oats.  I like quick oats the best, especially when I use them in baking.  

First up was the carrot cake oatmeal.  It smelled amazing! I could smell the carrot cake goodness as soon as I opened the resealable bag.  I knew I was in for a real treat. I kept my first meal with the oats pretty simple.  

Just a nice warm bowl of carrot cake oatmeal.  I just cooked the oats with water for 1:30.  I then stirred in a little unsweetened almond milk and a little fat free cream cheese.  After all, what is carrot cake without the cream cheese?! I topped it off with a drizzle of sugar free syrup.  

Amazing!!! I felt like I was eating carrot cake! Only this is way better for you :) So glad I ordered this flavor.  

Now for the red velvet cake.  Once again, I kept is somewhat simple so I could get the flavor of the oats.  

I cooked the oats the same way with only water.  No added milk this time but I did top this bowl off with some fat free reddi whip! 

Dessert in an bowl!!  I don't know exactly what they added to make this flavor, but they sure know what they are doing! Wow, just wow!

After enjoying some oats the "normal" way, I decided to have a little more fun.  We all know I love pancakes, I have made just about every flavor pancake you can imagine.  So of course I was going to make some carrot cake pancakes.

I just mixed 1 cup of the oats (40g) with 1 cup pureed carrots (240g), 3 T egg substitute (46g), 1 scoop cinnamon protein powder (30g), 1/2 t baking powder, 1 t cinnamon, a dash of salt, and some sweetener. 

Cooked them up like regular pancakes and boom!

That is one awesome breakfast!! Or lunch, dinner, snack, dessert...These were so good I could eat them any time! I have made carrot cake pancakes before, but these made my other ones seem like store bought frozen ones (ok, not that bad...) 

I had one more fun idea in mind...How about some Carrot Cake Cookie Sandwiches!?

Complete with cream cheese filling! These were soooo good!! I ground up the oatmeal into oat flour to make these delicious treats.  Perfection!! Check out my video to make some of these for yourself.  You will be glad you did :)

They turned out so good that I made a batch to eat plain too. 

These cookies are healthy, low fat, low carb, high protein and just plain yummy! 

I am so glad I got the chance to review some products from MyOatmeal!!  Such a great company.  I love them even more now because I found out it is run by a husband and wife! How cute is that?! You can really tell they put their heart and soul into this business!

I highly suggest you go order some.  Make sure you set aside a bit of time before you go to their site because you may be a little overwhelmed when you see all the flavor possibilities!! Seriously, I wanted to order so much more! As soon as I finish off these two bags (which won't take long) I think I want to try cookie dough and strawberry cheesecake :) 

Pudding Oatmeal

I have been on a major oatmeal kick lately.  It's super healthy and a pretty quick meal.  BUT, a big old bowl of oatmeal is very boring.  Some people think of oatmeal as a yucky bowl of mush! Trust me, this oatmeal is anything but yucky! (Although it is still kinda mushy...) I have been playing around with different ways to jazz it up a bit.  My favorite so far is cheesecake oatmeal!

Old fashioned oats and sugar free fat free pudding mix is all you need!! I chose cheesecake this time! You can absolutely use any flavor of pudding here.  You can use vanilla, chocolate, white chocolate, banana cream (those are all the sugar free fat free flavors).  Of course you can also use regular pudding mix and have more options, but then you have a lot more sugar being added.

This is so quick and simple to make.  Just take 1/2 cup oats and about 2 T of the pudding mix.  You can also add some sweetener ( I add 3 splenda ) and a dash of salt.  Then add 2 cups of water.  The oatmeal container directions will say to only add 1 cup of water. We are going to let our oats sit for a while so they will absorb the extra water and expand.  This is going to give you an extra big bowl of yummy oatmeal!  Also, the pudding mix will need the extra water.  Feel free to substitute any type of milk instead of water. 

I recommend using a whisk to mix it up good because the pudding mix will clump together.  A spoon will work, just make sure you get all the clumps out.  You will also want to use a decent size bowl because your oatmeal will expand in the microwave.  Depending on the flavor of pudding you use, you could add some cinnamon, vanilla, cocoa powder, etc to the mix. Get creative! I kept it simple on this batch.

Microwave for 2 minutes.  Take it out and stir it up good.  Then microwave another 30-45 second.  Keep an eye on it!  At about 2 1/2 minutes it will start to boil and could spill over.  (I learned this the hard way) It is also nice to have a bigger bowl so you can go crazy with toppings!  

It already looks thicker.  Let it sit for about 5 minutes uncovered and then put it in the fridge.  I usually let mine sit overnight, but it really only needs a couple hours to let the pudding set.  When it is ready you can microwave it for a bit or just eat it cold.  I actually prefer it cold because of the pudding. Almost like a bread pudding texture.  Either way it is super yummy! 

This is the really fun part!! Toppings! You can get so creative here. I kept this one simple with just some sliced bananas and some sugar free syrup.

You can also do vanilla pudding mix with bananas, cinnamon, peanut butter, and whipped cream on top :)

Some other great topping could be strawberries, chocolate sauce, any nut butter, jam, dried fruit, apples, blueberries, nuts, chocolate chips, etc.  Play around with different puddings and toppings!

Pudding Oatmeal

• 1/2 cups old fashioned oats
• 2 T sugar free fat free pudding mix (any flavor)
• 2 cups water
• sweetener to taste
• dash of salt

Simply mix all ingredients together in a bowl.  Microwave 2 minutes.  Stir.  Microwave another 30-45 seconds.  Let sit for 5 minutes.  Refrigerate overnight or for at least 2 hours.  Enjoy warmed up or straight out of the fridge!   

What is your favorite oatmeal flavor??