Chocolate Oatmeal?

Did I say chocolate oatmeal?  Yes, I did!  I literally did a double-take in the cereal aisle the other night at Whole Foods when I saw this box:

Where have you been all my life?

I eat oatmeal as part of my breakfast most weekday mornings.  I keep packets of oatmeal at my desk at work and eat it there, because I’m usually too busy and harried to make breakfast at home before I leave for the office (I usually grab some fruit to eat in the car on the way – today, it was a big apple and two apricots).  I’ve tried a lot of different brands and types of oatmeal, but never have seen chocolate-flavored oatmeal before.  I’d actually never heard of Three Sisters Cereal, the manufacturer, either.

So I bought a box.

There’s five pouches in the box, and each pouch has a convenient line on it, so after you dump the oatmeal into your bowl, you can use the pouch to measure exactly the right amount of water to add.  Since I don’t have measuring cups at my desk, this is particularly handy for me.  Here’s the fill line on the pouch:

And the oatmeal, before I cooked it:

You can’t really see them that well, but there are little dark chocolate morsels mixed in with the oats.

The pouch with the fill line is a novel idea, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve seen it.  Another oatmeal line that I enjoy, Oat Revolution, which is made by Better Oats, also uses the same pouch, so I looked around online, and discovered that Three Sisters Cereal and Better Oats are both brands owned by the much bigger cereal company Malt-O-Meal.  Malt-O-Meal debuted Better Oats (which includes 29 instant oatmeal products spread over 9 brands) in spring 2010, in an attempt to better compete with oatmeal giant Quaker, and Three Sisters Cereal is their line of products that’s exclusively sold at Whole Foods (smart thinking, Malt-O-Meal!).  I like Better Oats products (and Three Sisters products too) because the boxes are smaller, and they fit better in my small cupboard.  I also like buying boxes with 5 servings as opposed to 8 or 10, so I don’t have to commit to eating 8 or 10 servings of any one flavor (I know, I know, I’d eat it eventually, but I don’t buy in bulk, because I don’t have the space to store it, and there’s always a flavor in the variety packs that I don’t really care for).  Plus, Oat Revolution seems to always be on sale, for either $1 or $1.25 a box.  The Three Sisters oatmeal was on sale at Whole Foods for $1.  Oatmeal for twenty cents a serving?  Yes, please!

Back to my breakfast…

Maybe you noticed that the oatmeal in the last picture is in a cup, not in a bowl, and they proved to be problematic, because when I nuked the oatmeal, it bubbled over in the microwave:

Oops!

I also noticed, post-nuking, that the Starbucks coffee cup I was using had small print on the back saying it wasn’t supposed to be microwaved.

Oops again.  I’ll know better for next time.

Here’s the end result:

And my first spoonful:

Man, was it good!  It tasted like molten brownie batter.  Like when you take brownies out of the oven a few minutes early, and they’re not quite done, so they’re still gooey in the center.  Seriously, it tasted just like that!  I kinda wanted to get ice cream and make a sundae!  (Not a good idea for me at 9:30 in the morning)  It was thick and creamy, and very rich (to the point where I don’t think I could eat it every day), and completely unlike any other oatmeal I’ve eaten.  And, despite having chocolate, it’s only 160 calories and 2.5 grams of fat per serving, which is pretty much in line with every other oatmeal product out there.

Incorporating chocolate into a healthy breakfast?

Keep it up, David!