Overnight Oats – A Great Reason To Get Up In The Morning!

Hands up if you struggle to find time to prepare yourself any sort of breakfast in the morning let alone a delicious and nutritionally complete meal that will have you salivating for it the minute you wake up? These overnight oats are fantastic! Not only because they take about 1 minute to whip up before you go to bed, not only because there is something very decadent about having a gourmet meal ready for you as soon as you wake up, not only because the goodness of low GI oats will satisfy you and keep those nasty morning hunger pangs at bay, not only because EVERY SINGLE ingredient is a natural wonder-food but especially because it tastes amazing!

I am sharing the recipe below which is how we have been eating them lately, but there are so many other things you can add/subtract to create some variety. (Think gogi berries, walnuts, LSA, macca powder, mixed spice, vanilla, prunes, craisins – the list is endless!) The quantities below make enough for about 6 servings (plus yoghurt and fruit). For the 2 of us it lasts for about 3 days (which is about as long as they would last in the fridge anyway) so as far as time management is concerned they are a little gem! Obviously if its the kind of thing your kids would eat as well the recipe is easy to double …

Overnight Oats (serves 6)

How to make it:

Place the following ingredients into a bowl:

1 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup whole raw almonds

1/2 cup shredded coconut

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

1 tablespoon chia seeds

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 apple grated – I like the consistency of the food processor (and I really detest standing there hand grating an apple!) – but either is fine (you could even finely dice it if you would prefer)

Mix the above well (as if you don’t you might get little clumps of chia/cinnamon – not that that is necessarily a bad thing ..) and add enough almond milk to cover. I use about 2 1/2 cups.

Cover and place in fridge overnight.

We love it with a dollop of greek yoghurt (I use the full fat Jalna brand) and 1 cup of chopped fruit. Berries, mango, nectarine, peaches, prunes, banana and/or passionfruit all work really well – depending on what you like. I also like to sprinkle mine with some cinnamon and flaked almonds.