No, there are no olives in this oatmeal, that would be gross I think. This became known as Olive Oatmeal because the idea for using bananas as a healthier natural sweetener came from my niece Olivia who I’ve called Olive since she was little.
I am not a chef nor nutritionist of any sort. I do love to cook though and sometimes things actually turn out OK.
Ingredients
- 1/3 cup Hamlyn’s Scottish Oatmeal
- 1/3 cup milk
- 1 cup (3/3 cup) water
- 1 scoop unflavored whey protein powder
- 1 cup Wyman’s blueberries
- 1 banana
Preparing
Combine the oatmeal and protein powder in a 1 qt disk bottomed sauna pan.
Add milk and water.
Mix well with whisk.
Slice banana in to pan.
Begin cooking over low heat, stirring frequently.
Microwave blueberries (I do 4 mins @ 40% power).
Once bananas have broken down and oatmeal first begins to simmer, remove from heat and slowly add blueberries. Yep, there’s a LOT of blueberry juice and it turns the oatmeal purple.
Notes
Hamlyn’s Scottish Oatmeal is my favorite. I’ve tried many others but this has the best taste and best texture. Being from Scotland I also know that it’s pure natural oatmeal with nothing added. If they are not available on Amazon then you’ll find them (along with Devonshire cream and other good stuff) at The Scottish Grocer.
I learned about Wyman’s Wild Blueberries from a chef on a ferry. He said that these, though frozen, are much better tasting and healthier than ‘fresh’ blueberries in most grocery stores. He was spot on and I’ve used them ever since in oatmeal, pancakes, cocktails, cakes, pies and other foods.
If you don’t like the purple color then set the blueberries out the night before so that they can thaw. There will still be a little juice but not as much as when they’re microwaved.
Bananas that are more ripe will need slightly less water and those not ripe enough can need as much as 1/3 cup more.
If bananas are not ripe enough I will sometimes slice them up and pan fry them in butter. This doesn’t help a lot but does help a little.
I use Kalona whole milk. For years I thought that I was lactose intolerant – except that I never had problems with any dairy in Europe – all the milk and cheese my heart desires. Kalona is the best I’ve found for me in the U.S. I think any non-homogenized and genuinely organic (vs what the USDA considers organic) milk would would do though.
Adding the blueberries slowly is kind of important. Milk doesn’t like any sudden temp changes.
Blueberries stain! I try to be careful to not drip or splash and I try to wipe up any spills and rinse the sink out immediately.
Bananas
Bananas have been a minor issue. Most are quite good but we sometimes get a variety that has a more bitter metallic taste and doesn’t break down well when cooked. The worst have consistently been from Fife’s so we now know to avoid those as no matter how ripe they get, they nearly always taste bad when cooked.
The good thing here is that we no longer have banana bread or banana pudding that tastes kind of off. We didn’t know before that we’d occasionally get a bad variety of banana. Now we know that if a banana is good in porridge then the rest of the bunch will be good in baking.