Gaining weight on a tight budget: Power-packed oatmeal

(For a re-cap, one of my daughters is recovering from an eating disorder and is in the process of weight restoration. She requires a great deal of calories every day. However, this kind of meal could also meet the nutritional needs of someone needing to gain weight for other reasons.)

This morning, we made another power-packed shake for breakfast, with whole milk, oats, peanut butter, canned pumpkin, cocoa powder, sugar and oil. It topped 650 calories.

But yesterday, we did another weekend, power-packed favorite -- the meal-in-a-bowl bowl of oatmeal.

I make this in the microwave, for ease.

In a microwaveable casserole dish:

• bring 1 cup of whole milk, and a pinch of salt just below boiling (about 2-3 minutes in the microwave).
• stir in, 1/2 cup rolled oats, and any of the following:

• 1/4 cup canned pumpkin, applesauce, or mashed, cooked yams
• 2 to 3 tablespoons finely shredded carrots or zucchini
• 1 tablespoon butter or oil
• 2 teaspoons or so of sweetener (honey, sugar, agave, jam, jelly, maple syrup, molasses)
• 1 to 2 tablespoons peanut butter (or other nuts butters)
• 2 to 3 tablespoons chopped nuts or seeds
• 1/4 to 1/2  cup chopped apple, pear, sliced bananas
• cocoa powder
• pinch spices (cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg)
• ground flax seeds
• 1 tablespoon heavy whipping cream
• extracts (vanilla, maple)
• minced, cooked ham, or, crumbled, cooked bacon, or, diced, cooked breakfast sausage

• Microwave for an additional minute or two, until the oatmeal is porridge-y consistency. Top with 1/2 cup of additional milk, if desired. 
• This is 1 serving.

The first two items, the whole milk and 1/2 cup of rolled oats, contain about 300 calories. As I'm creating a bowl of oatmeal, I add up the additional calories in my head. My daughter is now taking in 650 calories for breakfasts, which means I need to add 350 more calories from the remaining list. It would be easy to just add fats and sugars, but we're going for complete nutrition in 1 meal, so I like to add some fruit and/or vegetables, nuts and/or seeds and/or some cooked breakfast meat.

For the rest of the family, I make a second, larger casserole dish of oatmeal in the microwave, using water in place of milk, and omitting the addition of oils, butter, whipping cream. I still add fruit/veg, nuts/seeds, crumbled bacon, ham or sausage, and flavors/spices, for interest, variety and nutrition.

An early October lunch round-up

So, I think it's helpful to do an audit on my routines, to see if making a couple of changes could streamline my work, or simplify aspects of other work. So I took a minute to think about how I prepare lunch items for the brown-baggers each week.

It had been feeling like my Mondays were out-of-control busy every week. And I had to scramble to find enough to put into Monday's lunches, on Sunday afternoon, anyway. So, why not get a jump start on preparing a couple of the lunch items for the week, by making them on Sunday.

I'll try this for a few weeks, and see how it goes. This past Sunday afternoon, I made a large batch of pumpkin muffins, a pot of curried pumpkin-peanut soup (thanks, live and learn, for the recipe), and extra mustard-glazed carrots for dinner, to pack into small containers to add to lunches. The rest of the lunch items I prepared on Monday.

Here's the full menu:

• pumpkin muffins
• curried pumpkin-peanut soup
• mustard glazed carrot slices
• carrot sticks (while peeling those carrots for the glazed ones I figured I mght as well peel a bunch more for carrot sticks)
• fresh apples
• apple-cranberry sauce
• peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (made a bunch of sandwiches to try out some new Dollar Tree sandwich containers, they're super slim, and just fit a sandwich)
• toasted pizza sandwiches (these make great breakfasts as well as lunches, at least so says my daughter!) (instructions here, if you don't know what I'm talking about)
• mixed nuts

My daughters get a free lunch, if they want, on Tuesdays. There's a chapel service, followed by a lunch for commuter students. It's a great way to connect with other commuter students on campus, and they don't need to pack lunch for that day!