Welcome to Cooking Without Recipes, in which we teach you how to make a dish we love, but don’t worry too much about the nitty-gritty details of the recipe, so you can create your own spin.
Like millions of Americans, the first thing I do in the morning is lay in bed and look at Instagram with one eye closed because good God, who invented “work”? *Checks Wikipedia* Apparently it was Donald Trump. Everything is terrible at 6 a.m. Unless you’re my cat, in which case it’s time for crunchy food pellet breakfast, yum! But for this groggy human, it’s time for banana bread oatmeal, because life is short and breakfast should be more like dessert.
It all starts with quick cooking steel cut oats, like the yellow canister from Trader Joe’s, or whichever one at the grocery store says 6-8 minute cooking time. Don’t be fooled by those actual steel cut oats, they take 45 minutes and what am I, a pioneer? I have places to be. Like a well-sanitized cubicle.
Cook those according to instructions on the package, which are like, a little water I eyeball as being under an inch, ¼ cup of oats (for one), and a low-medium heat level. Once the oats start soaking up the water I throw in an entire banana, which I’ve chopped IN ITS OWN PEEL. Impressively crafty, no? You unpeel the banana, and then use one of the panels as a cutting board because yours may or may not have melted when left on the burner by accident one time.
Throw that nanner in, stir it around. Then I generously sprinkle in this “cake spice” I got from the best store in Chicago, the Spice House. Everyone who works there goes home smelling like cumin and yet they’re all delightfully helpful and happy. A generous spoonful of brown sugar follows, and a tiny, lipgloss-sized blob of vanilla bean paste, because extract is dead to me.
Stir while Soterios Johnson tells you the weather, which I will forget five minutes after he says it.
Once the bananas look like they’re breaking down and the oatmeal is starting to stick to the bottom—oops!—I quickly add a glug of Silk soy milk in the red container. It’s the creamiest, period. And it really brings out the “cake” in the cake spice, if you get me. Some people have issues with soy, and prefer a million other milk options, so live your best life.
If you’re able to multi-task in the morning, I bet you still remember your high school GPA, then throw some walnuts in the toaster oven for 30 seconds. I do this on special occasions, but have burned So. Many. Walnuts.
Once the milk’s been soaked up and my entire apartment smells like the best banana bread—and there’s a steaming cup of black coffee poured—breakfast is served, with a garnish of walnuts.