Savory oatmeal

Finally got around to creating a savory oatmeal dish, and it was pretty good!

The general idea for my dish was loosely based on Asian-style breakfasts which I loved eating when I was a kid.  Back then, we'd sometimes have boiled rice congee and all sorts of pickled vegetables and often, leftovers from the night before.  Sweet, carb- and gluten-loaded breakfast items were pretty rare in my growing up.  It wasn't that we couldn't get them; we just didn't grow up on them and didn't develop a taste for them until much later.  I didn't actually like bagels, muffins, or pizza until I was out of college.  Now I don't eat them much because they don't make me feel that well.

Anyway, these days for health reasons, I generally try to avoid too much simple carbohydrate, so I eat white rice sparingly.  And I'm kind of suspicious of the quality of canned pickled vegetables that you can get at Asian groceries (not to mention, I'm nowhere near close to an Asian grocery).  So, that leads me to a modified Asian breakfast that's kind of what I think of as Ireland meets Taiwan, a sort of Rosie O'Donnell mixed with Lucy Liu, St Patrick's Day celebrated with Chinese New Year.  ....yeah...no.

First, I boiled some steel cut oats:

In the water, I put a fair amount of salt and seasoning in the boiling water (my spices of choice were just a dash of each: coriander, cumin, thyme, basil, chili powder, turmeric, and red pepper) which cooked into the oats.  Cook per oatmeal package directions.

In a pan, carmelize sliced onion, then add vegetables.  I put in mushrooms, greens, and garlic.

Added a couple splashes of soy sauce, a small splash of vinegar, and hot sauce.  Once the vegetables were cooked, I just topped a bowl of the oatmeal with some of the vegetables.

Once you stop thinking your oatmeal has to be sweet, this makes just as much sense as any other food.  The oatmeal tasted a lot like polenta, which was kind of cool.  I could see taking the oatmeal and shaping it into patties to bake or grill and coming up with an oatmeal burger.  Hmm....

Yep, just checked, the oatmeal burger is a thing already.  But the various possibilities are there, just waiting....like taking boiled, seasoned oatmeal that you then shape into patties and fry?  Or if you like it sweet, try this.

Oh.  Yeah.