Pumpkin Oats

The blogosphere's gone pumpkin-crazy these days! Posts abound about pumpkin patches, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin bread, and Healthy Eats devoted a day to pumpkin's multiple possibilities. Everyone is singing the praises of the creamy beta-carotene-loaded vegetable.

Side note: I should really stop calling it a vegetable. My Botany professor from senior year would have smeared red ink all over my blog and docked my participation points for the day because it's actually a fruit, like zucchini, bell peppers and corn kernels o.o

I've been fully sucked in to the mania, as evidenced by my weekend post on pumpkin cookie-cakes. I also took a few ideas from that Healthy Eats post and tried my first pumpkin Green Monster on Sunday; it was nice but needs some tweaking before I'm confident enough to post the recipe here. And yesterday morning I made my first batch of pumpkin oats.


To borrow the favorite turn-of-phrase of Tina at Carrots 'n Cake: holy yum! These oats were extraordinarily creamy and only one tablespoon of sugar away from being a remarkable substitute for pumpkin pie.

-1/2 cup old-fashioned oats
-1/2 cup light soy milk
-1/2 cup water
-1/2 cup pumpkin puree
-1 teaspoon maple syrup
-handful of raisins

I simmered everything for about ten minutes, until it looked like the water had been absorbed. This made double the volume of oatmeal I usually eat in the morning, so it was no surprise that I could only finish 2/3 before my stomach said "Stop!" The remainder went in the fridge, and I'm pleased to report the it was even sweeter and more fragrant today!

Some commenters on the Healthy Eats page suggested topping pumpkin oats with nut butters and chocolate chips. Nuts sound like a great idea--chopped walnuts would be perfect--but I will never understand the compulsion to put chocolate in everything. Personally, I find it really annoying when I'm trying to enjoy some delicate pancakes or banana bread and and an arrogant chocolate chunk commandeers my taste buds. Cocoa is such a strong flavor, and the aftertaste is so lingering, that it's very difficult to enjoy the substance of the meal if it's studded with the stuff. Chocolate definitely has its place (like in my favorite homemade pudding), but that place is not at breakfast.