Whiskey-Banana Oatmeal

What's this, you say? Is this Camila, writing a post on the ostensible food blog? What madness! I must surely be hallucinating.

Well, my friend, you may be hallucinating, but not about me. This is indeed happening. I have been roused from my blogging slumber by a brilliant invention. An almost-Andrew level of brilliance. It is simple: take oatmeal, add whiskey.

Well, not quite that simple. You also need bananas, cinnamon and brown sugar. And it doesn't have to be whiskey - rum, brandy, pick yer poison. But that's it, and it's amazing. You could also, incidentally, call this breakfast Bananas Foster Oatmeal, but I think it's crucial that the description have the alcohol in question in the name. Truth in advertising and all that.


Here are two ways of making this really amazing cold-wintry-day breakfast:

1. Slice some bananas and throw them in a saucepan with a bit of butter, some brown sugar and some cinnamon. Look, if you wanted precise quantities, today just isn't your day.

2. Let those get nice and tasty and mushy and sweet and cinnamony. Meanwhile, make some oatmeal - for the love of mercy, don't use instant or quick oats. Real oatmeal takes like two minutes in the microwave. Sheesh.

3. Do the bananas look great? Awesome. Grab a bottle and add a couple good glugs. I used Virginia Gentleman, which I'm kind of in love with because it's really amazingly cheap... and totally not bad. It's even quite good. Also it's bourbon made in Virginia, so, state pride, whoohoo.

4. Sorry, got distracted. Let your bananas get to know your booze for a moment. Here's where you would set them on fire, except you just got up and your feet are cold and the coffee's still brewing and who are you trying to impress, anyway? It's 11 a.m. and you only just woke up, you haven't done anything with your life this weekend, you're not that cool, set down the barbecue lighter and look at your priorities. Who do you think you are, Emeril?

5. Dump the boozlicious bananas on top of your freshly prepared oatmeal, stir it up, sit down with your hot coffee and enjoy. Dang, Emeril can go BAM by himself; you just won at breakfast. Weekend already a success.


or you can be like camila and do this:

1. put frozen bananas in a pot. set the temperature too high. wonder for a moment at how you can manage to burn things that are frozen. admire your mad skills. turn down the burner.

2. stare at the melting bananas and think that they look totally unappetizing. Wish the coffee were ready. Wonder why you didn't clean the kitchen yesterday, or two days ago, or the day before that. Add brown sugar.

3. Cheer up when the kitchen starts to smell like brown sugar and bananas. Add cinnamon. Poke the bananas with a spoon; still frozen. Think, "you know what this needs? Whiskey." In the moment which you would normally spend pausing to check if that was a terrible idea, add some freaking whiskey.

4. Become much, much happier when the kitchen smells like brown sugar and bananas and whiskey. Start to get very, very hungry. Add a cup of water to the bananas.

5. Realize there was probably a better way to do this. Watch the bananas disintegrate and think that this looks incredibly unappetizing again. Break the bananas up with a spoon to amuse yourself.

6. Once the banana-sugar-whiskey-water mess is boiling - wasting all the whiskey, you think sorrowfully, add half a cup of oatmeal. Get distracted by emptying the dishwasher so you can look yourself in the mirror, you slob. Come back five minutes later to find the unappetizing mess turned into beautiful oatmeal with banana all mixed up throughout.

7. Add more whiskey.

8. Sit down, and enjoy winning at breakfast. Hey, at least we all got to the same place.



The craziest thing is that nobody seems to have thought of this before. No, wait. I did some more googling and guess who did? The Scottish. A great country, Scotland. Of course, they appear to eat oatmeal and brandy as a dessert, but everybody knows the Scottish are crazy.


Now, you might be thinking, "Camila, only a crazy person would have whiskey in the morning." I'm not disagreeing. But you just might be a crazy person, and you should probably try - just to find out.