Everything Oats

Everything Oats

If you would have asked me as a child what my favorite breakfast was, chances are, oatmeal wouldn’t be at the top of my list. Would it have been yours?

As we get older, our tastes evolve with us. We become more diverse and adventurous in what we try. Things children are most likely to turn down often become the thing they crave about 10 years later. For me, I noticed the beginning of the oat bowl revolution during the start of the pandemic. My favorite health and fitness influencers would constantly post TikTok tutorials and Instagram stories featuring their work of art—their oat bowl. There’s even a TikTok creator with 1.6 million followers named @tracesoats; he dedicates his entire page to curating different oat bowl recipes ranging from birthday cake to dark chocolate peppermint. This just goes to show how the world has changed their view on classic oatmeal. It isn’t just your average breakfast but rather an opportunity for imagination and deliciousness at any point of the day.

Making oats in your dorm

Change it to oat bowl rather than oatmeal

Anyone unfamiliar with this fairly new trend might be confused about the difference between oatmeal and an oat bowl. An oat bowl allows room for creativity. The term oatmeal in itself is outdated in a sense that the physical oats aren’t always the only ingredient featured. Whether it’s dousing the oats with nut butter or topping it off with fruits, granola, and chocolate chips, the possibilities are endless. It almost doesn’t feel right to call this food oatmeal because of the bland connotation it carries. Swap the term for oats or oat bowls and it becomes a more flexible concept. What I’ve learned over my year and a half at Syracuse is that you don’t need a full sized kitchen to make your own loaded oat bowl. The dining halls already provide students with packaged oatmeal and that’s all you need to start—think of it as a blank canvas. I usually mix the oatmeal with almond butter to give it more volume, top it off with granola for a crunch, more almond butter or peanut butter and finish it with sliced banana from the dining hall. That’s one of many ways to create your own masterpiece. When peaches and nectarines are in season, I love adding them to my bowl. Some people even add a scoop of protein powder, turning the classic oats into proats, as some call it. Cinnamon is, of course, a must in any oat bowl whether it be mixing it in or dashing some over berries. But, if you’re fortunate enough to have a kitchen in your apartment, stove-top oats are the way to go. I’ve learned that if you mix in a splash of your milk of choice (mine is oat milk which is quite fitting) and Grade A maple syrup, your oats become more creamy and flavorful.

The incredible thing about oat bowls is that there are endless combinations and flavors to try. You can even find oat bowls in açaí shops like Purple Banana right on Marshall Street (see page 20). Oatmeal seemed like a simple topic at first, but when you truly dive into what this breakfast item has become over the past few years, it’s more than a morning meal. I’m not alone when I say that some nights I go to sleep excited knowing that I’ll have an oat bowl for breakfast. Mornings have never been more innovative since the oat bowl revolution.