Ideas for oats or oatmeal (healthy something)

[sbgrace]

My son has a lot of allergies and is on a rotation diet. I really need him to eat oats on the rotation day for oats as we're extremely limited in good grain sources. He was eating and loving cooked oatmeal with maple syrup and now he's allergic to maple syrup. I can't figure out how to make it in a way he likes w/out the maple syrup. Any ideas that don't use maple syrup or dairy? I'm frustrated.

[Gingercat]

I use coconut oil and/or coconut milk while cooking my oatmeal. When cooked I add nuts, dried fruit, some raw honey and cinammon. It is delicious!

[Zevy]

Oh yummers...

mashed banana and walnuts: banana bread oatmeal
mashed/cut up apple or pear
spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, etc
sprinkled coconut and cocoa powder
frozen blueberries
swirl of nutbutter
use fruit juice rather than water: orange juice, etc
try different forms of oatmeal for textures: steel cut oats, oat bran, etc
make it savory: salt, pepper, non-dairy cheese,
canned pumpkin and pumpkin pie spice: pumpkin pie oatmeal
use some flavored oil: olive, coconut, walnut, etc.
dried fruit: raisins, dates, figs, etc

[aikigypsy]

I cook oats in water -- always have, the milk tasted weird in them to me. I usually eat oatmeal with butter and a sprinkling of dark brown sugar, less than a teaspoon. Lately, we'll also have natural, sulfite-free bacon with it, too (cooked in the microwave).

I recommend trying steel cut oats for variety. You need about 3 cups water per cup of steel cut oats, but otherwise they cook just like old fashioned rolled oats, in about 20 minutes.

Oops! Just realized that the butter component is definitely dairy! But, butter is sometimes OK for people with lactose intolerance, if that's the issue with dairy. I'm sure you can find some butter-substitute, if not, and the bacon and salt can be good even without butter. My 2 year-old uses the bacon as a spoon to scoop up the oatmeal.

[425lisamarie]

If you want something sweet, try dicing up an apple finely and cooking it with some cinnamon like applesauce first, then add a few raisins and a splash of coconut milk (if not allergic). If he doesn't like chunks you can puree the apple/raisin mix and it makes it really sweet.

BTW for maple syrup alternative I purposely make a fruit/date syrup/puree type thing. I just boil apple with dates/water and puree in the blender. I cook it down to REALLY thick and use for baking, or leaving it thinner and use like a syrups/applesauce

[DevaMajka]

Could you try it with cooked frozen fruit/berries? Once you heat them up, they get kinda syrupy. I've had them in oats before, and they were yummy!

[mumkimum]

The coconut milk/apple/raisin combo (or just any one of these) would be real tasty. I also like adding orange zest sometimes, and applesauce is another good addition.

Not sure if it would work for your ds, but brown rice syrup might be a similar option to maple syrup. I've also had apple syrup before (I would assume you could do something like this yourself by heating apple cider or juice until it reduces itself, so 20-30 minutes) and something like that might be another option (you could probably use any fruit juice you prefer).

[sbgrace]

Thank you so much for these great (and varied) ideas! I'm feeling really good about oats day coming around again as I think we can find something here that will work for him! Thank you!

[AnnaNova]

i like baked oatmeal, like this one
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Baked-O...II/Detail.aspx
except i use nut milk in place of regular milk, and agave nectar in place of sugar... im sure it will be fine if you dont put butter in it too, it tastes almost like an oatmeal cookie...
i also like grating an apple and putting it in oatmeal WHILE it's cooking, you wouldnt think it'd make any difference, but it does! it tastes like applesauce oatmeal (i add some sort of sweetener too).
also in raw cuisine, they soak steel cut oat for 5 days, (change water daily), then puree it in a blender to the consistency of cooked oatmeal, then warm it up a bit. it preserves all the nutrients that otherwise would be cooked down.

[kjbrown92]

Can you make granola? oatmeal cookies? Do you get oat flour to use in things?

Can you do cane sugar? For instance molasses or brown sugar?
Can you do sorghum? Sorghum syrup is a little like molasses
Is there any other sweetener?
Can he have apples? You could swirl in some applesauce. Or some kind of safe jam (I've found ones that are just peach and sugar or blueberries and sugar, no pectin or citric acid added).

[tanyalynn]

There's along thread in this forum on Baked Oatmeal, it's really, really flexible, almost everything can be subbed out--I even subbed out the oatmeal for a while! (buckwheat)

http://mothering.com/discussions/sho...ighlight=baked

This is it. I ended up with squares, to eat either with a fork or with fingers, but it's a make-ahead thing which I love, and it was tasty and flexible.