Earthmovers and Sandcastles

I could have put this over at the foodie blog, but I want to share the love far and wide. I Twittered about doing this yesterday, and I got mixed reactions of horror and intrigue. Mind, it’s far from my own original idea! Near as I can tell, the first person to blog it may have been Polly, but it’s been adopted by many people across the net, and I was eager to try it myself.

Spinach oats.

Now, now, I need to be crystal clear: it does NOT taste like spinach. That big handful of spinach leaves that I blended to bits in my pot of oat bran and sliced banana just…vanished! The oats were dyed green, and all the nutrition stuck around, but the flavor? Gone. And I was more than prepared for a spinach taste to remain, as I love spinach and would have been fine with then searching out a way to flavor the bowl to complement a more savory profile. Nope! No “green” taste at all! Yesterday, I then added some pumpkin, granola, and walnuts; today, as pictured, I added cherries and blueberries, ricotta cheese, and slivered almonds.

In fact, I’d say that the bigger adjustment I had to make was getting used to the oat bran I prepared in place of my usual steel-cut oats – an unnecessary change for the addition of spinach, but a choice I made based on finding a big bag of bran at my health food store. They’re very nutritious, and they cook up super fast! But they are much stickier than regular oats, which Eric, for one, found disagreeable; he plans to mix oats with oat bran, rather than have straight bran in his bowl. I don’t mind the new texture a bit, so I’m happy to have an alternative cereal choice for days when I’m more pressed for time.

Anyway, why not give it a shot? I promise, if you like oatmeal, you will like spinach oats. Heck, eat ‘em in the dark if the color freaks you out.

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