I’m bat­tling a cold as I write this. I rarely get sick so this feels par­tic­u­lar­ly sad :’( but maybe this is the body’s way of telling me that it needs to come first sometimes.

Any­way. I was talk­ing with a friend about break­fast habits one day, and I told her that I often can’t stom­ach more than a frozen waf­fle or a piece of but­tered toast in the morn­ing, and end up feel­ing extreme­ly hun­gry by 10am. She shared about her new found excite­ment for overnight oats and gave me some ingre­di­ents to try. I don’t like the tex­ture of oat­meal very much but I thought it was an intrigu­ing idea (soak overnight? No cook­ing? No bak­ing? You can add all kinds of fruit and top­pings? Like a sun­dae?), so I did give it a try.

And it’s the best thing ever! :D

There are a lot of recipes for overnight oats (like this list!). I think it’s some­thing that you can just put what­ev­er you want in it and it would taste pret­ty good. I gen­er­al­ly use 1/3 cup oats (old fash­ion, not quick), 1/3 cup milk, some kind of fruit, and 1 table­spoon of this Qia cere­al mix (it was on sale at the super­mar­ket and has chia seeds, hemp seeds, buck­wheat, almonds and cran­ber­ries in it. I thought it was a more sen­si­ble pur­chase than buy­ing full bags of chia seeds and hemp seeds when I was just try­ing things out). Here are some com­bi­na­tions of ingre­di­ents I’ve tried:

Clock­wise from top left:
Apple, cin­na­mon and honey
*Delux!* Strawberry/peach/mango frozen fruit mix, straw­ber­ry yogurt and vanil­la soy milk
To cel­e­brate Year of the Mon­key — peanut but­ter, banana and honey
Hum­ble blue­ber­ry and honey

Noth­ing fan­cy, but super fill­ing! Now I start feel­ing hun­gry at noon instead of 10am! :D

I don’t have it every day, but have been mak­ing it for both Mike and me espe­cial­ly when we antic­i­pate a busy day ahead. I find it less mushy than oat­meal. Cold oat­meal some­how tastes a lot bet­ter to me than hot oat­meal. And I like hav­ing fruit in it. And it’s so sim­ple to put togeth­er the night before, saves a bunch of time in the morning!

See­ing that it is Chi­nese New Year tomor­row, here’s wish­ing every­one a year of good health and happiness!

祝大家新年快樂,身體健康!