Every week we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was Crockpot Steel Cut Oatmeal, found over at Ground Beef Budget. Printable recipe can be found at the bottom of this post.

Robyn’s Take:

This week’s recipe was Nance’s pick, and I was totally on board. I read, months ago, about how good steel cut oatmeal is, so I rushed right out and bought a container of it. It’s been sitting in the damn pantry ever since. I do that shit all the time, make a special trip to buy some ingredient or another, and then never make the recipe the ingredient was bought for. I drive myself nuts when I do that.

The ingredients:

Steel-cut oats, vanilla, cinnamon, milk, butter, brown sugar. The recipe suggested dried apple slices or other dried fruit and I had no dried apple slices on hand (it’s not a pantry staple for me), I used blueberry-flavored dried cranberries (you blueberry haters can shut it.) Also, not pictured: 2 cups of water.

Step one, combine all your stuff in a heat-proof bowl that will fit in your crock pot and allow room for a water bath. I had exactly one bowl that fit the bill, my Pyrex 1.5-liter bowl, so I used that. When you toss all your ingredients into the bowl and mix, you don’t get the prettiest result. I’m not going to say what this looks like, but I think you know what I’m thinking.

Put the heat-proof bowl in your crock pot, fill it with water to the height of the liquid in the bowl.

Cover it, set it on low, and go the hell to bed.

I started mine at like 8:30 at night, because if Fred gets in bed past 9:13 in the evening, he acts like I’ve forced him to stay up ALL NIGHT LONG. I swear to god, I used to be a night owl. Last night I was asleep by 10:01. Par.tay.

I was up at 5:01 because I had kittens to check on and things to do, and this is what the oatmeal looked like.

Is it just me, or do my blueberry-flavored cranberries look like black olives? I stirred it up, and it looked a little less nasty.

Just a note, getting the damn bowl out of the GODDAMN crock pot without dipping my oven mitts into the hot water proved impossible, and I found it annoying. If I had a higher bowl, I would use that in the future. I do not have a higher bowl that would also fit in the crock pot right, so I should just shut the fuck up.

“Self,” I said to myself, “I wonder if it will be possible to get a decent picture of this stuff?”

Uh… nope. Not really. Not possible for me to take a picture that makes oatmeal look pretty. This might be because oatmeal is not a pretty food. Now, watch: that goddamn Nance will post a picture of her oatmeal that will make y’all drool. Damn her.

The verdict? This stuff is good. I don’t know that I’d use blueberry-flavored cranberries again, but I’d probably use frozen blueberries (I love blueberries, shut up) or maybe I’d suck it up and buy dried apple slices. For that matter, I bet applesauce stirred into the oatmeal would be good.

Will I make it again? Probably. Who doesn’t like oatmeal? In fact, I’m eating leftover oatmeal for lunch later!

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Nance’s Take:
Truth Game:  I had never heard of Steel Cut Oatmeal until I read about it on a blog written by a woman named Carrie.  She was an overweight mom of two boys who decided to get off her couch one day and OHMYHELL, SHE’S A SKINNY MINNIE THAT IS RUNNING MARATHONS NOW!

NO LIE.

Meanwhile, she had mentioned the oatmeal in one of her entries and I pretty much rolled my eyes because she’s all healthy now so I was all whatever, I get my oatmeal out of an envelope, thankyouverymuch, now please pass the cancer causing chemicals.

And then my mom decided to have some health issues and all the sudden I’m buying whole wheat bread and looking for anything that had a shit ton of healthy whateverthefucks in it.  Gawd, do you realize how hard it is for someone like me to eat something that looks like this…

I was convinced that no good was going to come from eating what appears to be the kind of food one feeds a parakeet or hamster/rodent type animal.

The word “oatmeal” is what did it for me.  I love oatmeal.  I grew up on it (not this kind) and think it’s fabulous.  So I really had high expectations for how this was going to turn out.  That is, until I opened the package and saw this shittin’ mess.

Please note the time. Yup. I started this hot mess at 11:30 at night because I am an idiot. The good news is that it’s incredibly easy to mix up.

Dump your parakeet feed into a bowl. And then dump everything else in with it. Stir.  Hey, I can do this!  I’m not even that tired!

You need to have a bowl that is heatproof (no rubber) because you’re going to put this inside the crockpot and surround it with water. And that water is gonna get hot. Don’t be STUPID. By the way, that bowl (which is Polish Pottery) was found at a thrift store for $6. Eat your heart out, suckers!

I was so pissed off when I took this photo because, of course, there was no one around when I could have used a hand to take this picture. I might have cussed LOUDLY. Maybe. Probably. Okay, YOU KNOW I DID.

Oh, hello probably more than two tablespoons of butter. I didn’t bother to technically measure it. I eye-balled it and called it good (and it turned out that I was right, hmph).

This was my kitchen assistant for the recipe and as you can see, TOTALLY USELESS and DOES NOT PAY ATTENTION.

I set that baby up and threw myself into bed because my dumb ass was tired.

Do you think you can get your head in there any further, Maddy? Sheesh. By the way, I would like to note that this is the asshole cat from Alabama that I adopted (oh, so stupid was I). It was also the first bottle fed kitten that Robyn fostered. She is the biggest pain in the ass, hates Rick with a passion, and is really kind of rude to company.  But I love her dearly and wouldn’t change a thing about her.

This is what it looked like the next day. No, the bowl did not move while it was cooking. My husband had some for breakfast before he left for work and he moved it.

It smelled fabulous. I was dying to try it because I was amazed that it didn’t look like the stuff I put in it the night before.

I threw a few craisins on it (Cranberry/Cherry) and it was ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS. Loved it. It’s just like oatmeal, only better. That’s the only way I can describe it. And it’s supposedly healthy so it’s a win-win. Rick loved it, my mom loved it, and Trey says, “I don’t eat oatmeal” so he never tried it. His loss. More for me!

It will definitely go into the recipe book as a winner!