penitent, turbulent, multiplex!

I stole this recipe from someone a few years back, and I’ve since added a few things. I went backpacking with some friends this past weekend, and I made about a kilo of this stuff for breakfast. My comrades made fun of me (“how are we going to eat all that?” etc.) but by the end of the second day, it was almost all gone! (Mind you, I had a lot to do with that.)

If you have 5 minutes and some very basic ingredients, you can make this wicked snack.

Ingredients:

The ratios here depend a lot on how much you want to make. So, I’m not going to be too specific about amounts. The peanut butter is really the limiting reagent. If you use the amount I specify here, you should get about 750g of oats into it, I think.

• 2 cups peanut butter (the fake stuff, like Kraft smooth)
• rolled oats (NOT quick oats)
• brown sugar
• vanilla
• Whatever other stuff you want to add — raisins, nuts, etc.

Directions:

1. Put a big pot on the stove, and turn the heat on low (2-3).
2. Toss in the peanut butter, stirring slowly and constantly so that it doesn’t burn on the bottom.
3. When the peanut butter is completely liquid, add about a tablespoon of vanilla, and mix it in. Then start stirring in brown sugar. Depending on how sweet you want it, add more or less. I tend to keep putting in sugar until it refuses to stay ‘in solution’ anymore
4. Slowly stir in oats, a 1/3 cup at a time. As you add them, they’ll mix with the PB and form large PB-oat globs. Beat the hell out of the globs to make them smaller by stirring vigourously. (This is why it helps to have a big pot — keeps the oats in the pot and off of the kitchen floor.)
5. Keep adding oats until the concoction is more oat-colored than peanut-butter colored. You can add a LOT of oats and still get a really strong flavour in the end.
6. When you’ve got enough oats in there, throw in the other ‘solid’ bits (raisins, etc.) and mix well.

That’s it! This stuff is great on its own, or on top of vanilla yogurt. If you’re out camping and you make oatmeal, you can stir a couple of tablespoons of this in to make it a bit more exciting.