Comunidad Health Foods

Alright class, did you do your homework? You know what I mean – did you make your chipotle sweet potato dip like I told you to on Monday?

…No?

Well then how are you supposed to make your chipotle sweet potato oats for tomorrow morning?!

As promised, I have for you a recipe that clearly, I am very excited about. I’ve been a fan of overnight oats for about a year now. When I first started making them, I was toying with the idea of adopting a partially raw diet, which is why I gave them a shot in the first place. What I discovered, though, was that by soaking the oats and eating them chilled, you get a natural sweetness that is lacking from conventionally prepared hot oatmeal. Plus, it’s a ridiculously easy grab-and-go breakfast option that can usually be prepped in full the night before. Even though I haven’t started “eating raw,” I’ve still kept this dish as a staple in my diet. In fact, I’m such a fan of overnight oats that the sad emotions I might otherwise feel when I reach the bottom of a peanut butter jar are completely overpowered by the excitement I now associate with empty peanut butter containers –they make delicious vessels for overnight oats. I’ve heard that if you heat the oats and then pour them into the container, it releases the peanut butter from the sides of the container, but I do just fine with my spoon and will-power, scraping down those container walls like I’m getting paid to do it.

 

Because there is peanut butter in the dip, I thought empty-peanut-butter-container-overnight-oats would be fabulous. It turns out, I was very right this time. My first attempt was a little bit bland – it was enjoyable in that clean, barely-spiced kind of way, but it was certainly not worthy of the name “ChipotleSweet Potato Overnight Oats. For my next attempt, I amped up the chipotle, used my updated (and, I think, perfected) dip recipe, and crossed my fingers for the best. The next morning, I woke up, bounced out of bed, and happily tried out my recipe – perfection! It was hot in a smoky, back-of-your-throat kind of way, cool and refreshing. The consistency was spot on, thick and substantial but not gloppy or unappealing. It was exactly what I was going for. I’m smiling now just thinking about it. Seriously, this recipe is a game changer, a winner, a keeper, a slam dunk straight out of the park home run touch down goal hole in one gold medalist in the breakfast food Olympics.

If you think I’m kidding, you haven’t tried the recipe out yet for yourself. My friends, I assure you, this is no laughing matter.

I have to apologize for the lack of Thirty Minute Thursday posting yesterday – luck was not on my side, and I just wasn’t able to cook something new over the past week at all, much less a recipe from Rachael Ray’s cookbook. I head back to school on Sunday, though, which will start a domino effect of my needing to cook for myself at all times once again; my choosing not one, but three Rachael Ray recipes just for next week alone; and, therefore, my having plenty of meals to share with you for future Thirty Minute Thursdays.

And on top of all of that, I don’t even have a recipe for humans to share with you today. Well, that isn’t entirely true – you certainly could eat these Oatmeal Cranberry Dog Treats if you wanted. There’s nothing stopping you but your gag reflex, since all of the ingredients are 100% edible to both humans and canines. They just don’t have the fat or sugar to make it particularly palatable; at least, that’s what I’m assuming based on my last experience making dog treats where curiosity got the better of me and I took a nibble of one. If you also choose to do this, you may question if your puppy has taste buds at all, because both dogs to whom I gave these treats (my own puppy as well as L’s dog) somehow loved them. To pass my puppy’s test is no great feat – he’s been known to eat everything from organic, grass fed beef to actual stones that he picks up outside – but L’s dog, in his older age, is more particular, yet he still loved them.

My only regret with this recipe is that it didn’t make more. I’m not sure if I made the treats about twice the size of how they were intended, but I only got 1 dozen out of the halved recipe, when a full batch was said to yield 5-6 dozen. Still, a dozen is a decent amount considering you don’t want them hanging around as long as the preservative-laden store bought treats anyway (plus, they should be a treat, not an all-the-time kind of thing), and if you go into the recipe expecting that you might wind up with a lesser amount, you should be fine.