Slow Cooker Oatmeal with Baked Pears
Healthy and decadent are two words that seldom appear in the same sentence, but this breakfast is entitled to both descriptions. While winter doesn’t offer as plentiful a bounty as the other seasons, there is no excuse to exclude fruit from your breakfast. When its cold outside and snow covers the ground, all we can think about is heavy food- stews, braised meats, and tummy-warming baked goods- but in reality, these foods take our bodies out of balance. Sure these foods are nourishing, but often, they are more comforting to our inner child than beneficial to our physical selves. What I mean is, the foods we eat during winter time weigh us down; they make us lethargic, sleepy, and slow. They require so much energy to digest that we feel drained after such heavy meals. So many casseroles, meats, sausages, and potatoes, and too little veggies and fruits- why do we put our bodies through this?
Perhaps I am more sensitive than many, but these foods truly wreak havoc on my body and after a winter of heavy eating, I spend all of spring just getting my energy back. Is that large breakfast worth the bloating you’ll suffer through an hour later? Try this oatmeal and baked pear breakfast combo and you’ll soon realize that satisfying (there’s 10 grams of fiber per serving!) and heavy don’t have to be synonymous. Enjoy!
Slow Cooker Oatmeal with Baked Pears
Serves 6
Oatmeal:
1 small slow cooker
1 cup steel cut oat groats (these can be found in most health food or natural food stores)
4 cups water
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tbsp vanilla
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tbsp chinese five spice powder (optional)
Method:
1. Dump ingredients into a small slow cooker, stir to combine, and cook on high for 2-3 hours or on low for 4-5 hours. In the last hour of cooking, open top and stir in cinnamon, vanilla, maple syrup and five spice powder, if using. Place top back on and finish cooking.
2. Place cooked oatmeal in a large container, cool, and score top of oatmeal with a knife to mark six even sections.
Baked Pears:
6 bartlett pears, ripe but not mushy
3/4 cup golden raisins
3/4 cup dried cranberries (the higher the quality the better)
2 cups boiling water
1 Tbsp cinnamon
2 Tbsp brown sugar
cooking spray
Method:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees and spray ceramic or glass baking dish with cooking spray.
2. Halve and core pears. Place cut side up in baking dish. Soak raisins and cranberries in 2 cups boiling water for 10 minutes.
3. Mix brown sugar and cinnamon in a small dish and sprinkle over cut sides of pears. Drain raisins and cranberries, but save the liquid, and place in the holes in the pears where the core used to be. Pour soaking liquid from dried fruit into the bottom of the baking dish.
4. Bake covered with aluminum foil for 35-45 minutes, or until pears are soft and a knife pierced into a pear faces no resistance.
Pears soft and juicy after a long, hot bath in the oven!
Final preparation:
1. Place 1/6th of oatmeal in 6 separate bowls and add 1/4 cup of water (a little less if you like really thick oatmeal) to each bowl. Microwave each bowl on high for 2 minutes (approx) and top each with two stuffed pear halves. Enjoy!
-M : )
