Don't you just love the smell of polyphenol antioxidants in the morning? That's right, we're talking oatmeal, the simple meal that delivers a lot of complex nutrition in the form of comfort food. Oats have it all: quality carbs, magnesium, phosphorus, and thiamine; beta-glucan for good cholesterol; and disease-fighting polyphenol antioxidants called avenanthramides.
No wonder oatmeal is the go-to breakfast for many fitness fanatics. It's a great choice—if your oatmeal of choice isn't the heavily sweetened, instant-packet variety. Yet even healthy versions of oatmeal can get kind of boring after a while.
If you've been hanging with the nuts-and-berries topping treatment for too long, it's time to switch it up. Think of oats as a blank canvas ready to welcome all sorts of exciting and tasty flavor profiles.
1. Sweet Potato Oatmeal Muffins with Blueberry Sauce
Bake up a batch of these in advance and you'll have a week's worth of a pre-portioned breakfast meals that'll help you bolt out the door in the morning.
If you want to use rolled oats, simply delete the step where you soak the steel-cut oats and increase the amount of oats to 1-1/2 cups. You can also replace the sweet potato with canned pumpkin puree.
2. Golden Milk Oatmeal
Inspired by turmeric-flavored "golden milk", these photogenic no-cook overnight oats are jazzed up with an exciting spice mixture and tangy kefir, a fermented milk filled with lots of gut-friendly probiotics. Yum!
3. Mocha Oatmeal
This kitchen hack of soaking the oats in warm water overnight gets your bowl of creamy, satisfying oatmeal on the table in a flash. Too sinful with added coffee, flavored protein powder, and sweet-tart cherries? Nope.
