#almond milk

Oil Free Vegan Baked Oatmeal Recipe

I have been trying to cut back oil as much as possible because I really do not think it is necessary at all. In fact I find that it overpowers the flavours in my salad, makes my veggies brown (and ugly looking) and not to mention it really does not have any added nutrition. If you want to find out more about it I suggest you read all about it here I was finding it hard to find a recipe that did…

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This week, I’m going to be making a quick and easy rice pudding dessert, recorded in a 14th century Neapolitan cookbook - the Cuoco Napoletano! Rice began being used in medieval Europe intensively around the 9th or 10th centuries AD - though evidence for it’s cultivation in the Eastern Mediterranean date back to Alexander the Great’s conquests into Asia.

In any case, let’s now take a quick look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video, above!

Ingredients (makes 4 portions)
2 cups rice
4 cups almond milk
1 cup sugar
saffron

Method
1 - Wash and Cook Rice
To begin with, we need to cook some rice. I used basmati rice, but Arborio or other, fatter-grained rice would have been used in antiquity as well! Begin by washing a couple of cups of rice in some cold water. Move the grains around with your hands, to get rid of excess starch. When the water runs clear, place your rice in a pot, and fill up with cold water until the rice is just about submerged.

Place your pot over a high heat until the water boils. Let everything cook until the rice is almost done - but not quite ready. Take it off the heat and let it cool down.

2 - Prepare Saffron
Next, rehydrate your saffron a little. Do this by letting it sit in some boiling water for a few minutes. Saffron is VERY expensive, so you can of course skip this step - it’s really only to add colour, and a slight woody taste - to the finished dish!

3 - Prepare the Milk
While your rice is cooling, go pour about 4 cups of almond milk into a saucepan, along with a cup’s worth of sugar. Bring this to a boil over a medium heat. The original recipe tells you how to make almond milk as well, by combining ground almonds with water. Keep your sugar and milk mixture stirring occasionally, while you wait for it to boil.

4 - Combine Ingredients
When the almond milk is at a rolling boil, turn the heat down to low and let it simmer away. Add in your cooled rice back into the pot, along with your rehydrated saffron! Mix everything together, and let it cook for another ten to twenty minutes. Or until your rice is lovely and soft, and stays in a soft mound when you pile it up with a spoon.

Serve up either warm or at room temperature, and dig in!

The finished dish is quite simple, yet very sweet! The three main ingredients - rice, almonds, and sugar - would have been readily available in many medieval Mediterranean markets - particularly in those markets at the conflux of trade routes, such as along the Italian coast.

The original recipe also mentions that other kinds of milk can be used when making this - such as goat milk. However, it neglects to mention that if you use those kinds of milk, stirring it when it’s coming to a boil could cause curds to form - making it more like a kind of cheese, rather than pudding.

banana brown sugar & cinnamon steel cut oats

Changing it up because they’re steel cut oats instead of rolled - which retain more fiber and protein because they’re not steamed and rolled out. 

A friend was telling me that your brain only has the capacity to make a certain amount of decisions during the day before getting “tired.” So the less decisions you make in the morning about what you’re going to eat, what you’re going to wear, how you’re going to do your hair, etc., the better. I guess you can consider my brain primed for the entire day because I haven’t made a decision about food in about a month. Oatmeal it is and always will be.

baked peaches + cinnamon + vanilla almond milk + little bit of brown sugar

I was craving peach cobbler because a mommy blog on pinterest spammed my home page with gorgeous desserts… not complaining… it just made me really crave buttery gooey yummy cobbler. so i made this. 

Because we all coffee addicted

Oatmeal is my favorite healthy breakfast if you couldn’t tell.

Homemade oatmeal ☺️ (Vanilla Almond Butter, oats, banana, apples, cinnamon, almond milk, chia seeds, liquid stevia )