A hot, filling breakfast is important to get my kid's school day off to a good start! I'm a disorganized mess of a dad who frequently wakes up late. Luckily, we've come up with Adventure Breakfast, a method that leaves us with piping hot oatmeal ready to be eaten anywhere we want.
I learned this method years ago. Bob's Red Mill shares it in a few places but this post is best.
What I am doing is simply this: take a 25oz Stanely Vacuum Bottle and fill it up with a cup or two of boiling hot water. I then wait 5 minutes for the thermos to heat up. I use the hot water from the thermos to clean something in the kitchen sink, and then I put 1 CUP of Bob's Red Mill Steel Cut Oatmeal in the bottle. I add 2 cups of boiling water and a pinch of salt, close the Stanley, and shake it a bit.
When we wake up in the morning we've got steaming hot oatmeal waiting for us!
We usually take some bowls, brown sugar and raisins (or whatever fixings my kid decides on that day) with us in the car. We stop someplace with a fantastic view along the route to school, and enjoy what has become known as Adventure Breakfast.
This recipe makes enough oatmeal for us to have a friend along too, but we can generally finish it between the two of us. You can use smaller and larger thermos, and adjust the volume of oatmeal/water to match.
Clean up is as easy as rinsing out the bottle.
An Assortment of Stanely Thermos sizes via Amazon
Bob's Red Mill Steel Cut Oats (4 Pack) via Amazon
(Via reader Ryan Powers, Alton Brown offers a more complicated path to oatmeal.)
