There are varying levels of frustration for the mandatory gluten-free. On that list is the old "Wait, why can't I eat this?" question. Hidden ingredients, contamination, Wheat randomly in soy sauce. You know what i'm talking about. For me, one of the worst of these was oatmeal. My work has a cafeteria. That cafeteria has oatmeal. I can't eat it. It's oatmeal, not branmeal or glutenmeal. That used to be a breakfast choice two days a week and a not unhealthy one at that, and trust me, not unhealthy is generally welcome in my life due to its relative rarity.
Obviously, though, it was simply nothing I could continue to have. The only oats we're allowed are mithril-cut. steel-blade fostered, unicorn horn processed magical oats from the magical oat factory. They're out there, sure, just not in any cafeteria or fast food place, certainly not anywhere near the word "instant," and you know, twice as expensive as the normies' oatmeal. So what are we going to do? Are we going to just give up? No. Are we going to curl up and hide in a corner? Sometimes, but not for too long. Are we going to whine? I just did but it didn't really get us anywhere, so let's move on.
No, we'll find some sort of alternative and make the best of things. Bob's Red Mill has a few options and of those, one is actually pretty good. First off, they have their own brand of gluten-free oatmeal. It's okay. Then there's a brown rice hot cereal. That's okay too. Neither are great and you actually have to put a whole ten+ minutes of effort into making them. I'm not in the business of putting ten+ minutes of effort into making anything that's just okay. This isn't the blog for that.
The Mighty Tasty Hot Cereal, while not entirely being mighty or tasty, is definitely worth the 10+ minutes of effort. It's basically a corn-based oatmeal substitute and I like most corn-based things that aren't pasta. It's more effectively savory than the rice stuff with a much better texture than a lot of oatmeals. It's also pretty versatile. You can lean towards a saltier/butterier (and butterier is a ridiculous word and I'm amazed Chrome's spell checker isn't picking it up) direction or you can go with nuts/raisins/brown sugar, etc. Either works pretty well. I find that following the cooking suggestion (a cup of the stuff on the stovetop in three+ cups of boiling water for ten minutes) gives me about three servings, maybe even four if I mix in some rice chex with each serving. It can be split into separate containers and taken to work and unlike some other breakfast options microwaves well.
There are some things I would not suggest mixing in. I thought chocolate chips would be an interesting idea. It was certainly a messy idea. Marshmallows were kind of a mess too. Knowing me, I probably combined both of them at the same time, which only made things worse. I've sort of blocked out the memory. If you find a trail mix that you trust being able to eat, that's a great mix in. I'm going to say cheese, while temping, is not. The bag/website/advertising material says it's a fairly good dinner side as well, but I don't really see that. If you cook it really dry then maybe you could pretend it's couscous. It's not.
I'd keep it as a breakfast option, but considering how few of those we have, it's a very worthwhile one. It's pretty easy to find. Most of my local supermarkets have it. Certainly places like Whole Foods and Mom's Organic Market will. It's relatively inexpensive. You get a decent number of servings from a package. Making it is quick and easy, which is the only reason it's even on this blog. Clean up is a snap. If you're going to make it on a Sunday morning and eat it then, that's two days more of breakfast you already have worked out for the week. It's not magical unicorn oatmeal and like I said, I wouldn't exactly call it mighty tasty, but it's sure mightier and sure tastier than a lot of other things we have are! That's good enough for me.
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