Jamie's Diet Food: Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal

Doesn't that look appetizing?

This is a tasty breakfast for days when I'm meeting my team for a long-ish ride (I have trouble calling 3 hours long, compared to my 8-hour rides last year). I do my short (60 minutes or less) morning rides fasted, and have breakfast after. That's usually zucchini frittatas, which I'll post next week.

I use quick-cooking steel-cut oats, which come par-boiled to save cooking time. Old-fashioned/rolled oats will cook quickly, but they will digest more quickly and cause a greater increase in your blood sugar. Same thing to a greater degree with quick-cooking rolled oats or instant oats. In summary, if they're quicker to cook, they'll be quicker to digest, and you'll run out of energy from them faster.

If you want to do true steel-cut oats, not the quick-cooking kind, I recommend making them in a crockpot the night before. Use a ratio of 4:1 liquid to oats, rather than 3:1. And you might want to grease the inside of your crockpot, or else you'll need a lot of elbow grease to clean off the dried-on oatmeal.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal

Ingredients:
1/4 cup chocolate almond milk
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup quick-cooking steel-cut oats
1/8 tsp salt
1 tbsp all-natural peanut butter

Directions:
Combine the water and almond milk in a small saucepan. Add salt Heat over high heat until it just begins to boil. Add the oats, cover, and reduce heat to medium. Stir every minute or two for 5-6 minutes. Add peanut butter at the six minute mark. Cook for two more minutes, stirring every minute or so. Remove from heat and let the oatmeal sit for a minute before you eat. Add a banana if you need more calories.