Spiced Banana Oatmeal with Almond Butter
Since Mike has been eating oatmeal so often these days, I have been trying to find different oatmeal recipes so that he doesn’t have to eat the same flavors every day. He claims that he doesn’t mind eating the same ones again, but I know the truth. 
As usual, I used my typical way of figuring out what ingredients to use in a recipe: whichever ones I’m trying to use up. First off, I had some bananas that were getting rather yellow. OK fine, they were looking like they might turn brown shortly.
Next on the list is Almond butter. I bought a container of Almond butter from Costco because I wanted to make a “knock off” peanut butter cup for my dad, but he likes almond butter, not peanut butter. Sad to say, I still have not made those yet.
Lastly, there is pumpkin pie spice. I made my own pumpkin pie spice using spices from my spice rack. Unfortunately, that recipe makes about 1/4 cup of pumpkin pie spice, and the recipe that I was making only needed about 1/2 teaspoon of spice. The good news is that the spice lasts a while if stored in an airtight container.
The result is this delicious oatmeal that came together in a only a few minutes and used up ingredients which I already had at home!
- 1 cup milk
- 1/2 cup rolled oats,
- 1 tablespoon chia seeds
- 1 ripe banana, mashed
- 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
- 3 tablespoons almond butter, divided use
- 1 tablespoon of walnuts
- In a small pot, bring milk to a boil over medium-high heat. Add the oats, chia seeds and banana to the milk. Stir until well combined. Cook over medium heat until most of the liquid has disappeared, about 5 minutes.
- Add the vanilla extract and pumpkin pie spice to the oatmeal. Stir to combine. Add two tablespoons of the almond butter and stir to combine. Remove from heat and cover the pot for 1 minute.
- Transfer oatmeal to a serving container, top with the remaining tablespoon of almond butter and walnuts. Serve immediately
Adapted from The Oatmeal Artist
