I went to bed last night in Charlotte, and woke up in…Ohio??

Nope – still Charlotte, but covered in SNOW and ICE!!  When I woke up I could hear the  ice raining down, which prompted me to stay in bed an extra 30 minutes.  I love weekends!  The snow brought out the little kids (or puppies) in all of us…

I thought this cold, snowy morning was the perfect time to finally show you how I make my perfect bowl of morning OATMEAL! 

How To: Rice Cooker Oatmeal & PB2 Topping!

It all starts the night before.  I have this amazing Zojirushi rice cooker that my mother-in-law gave us last year (thank you, Tina!!).  While it is a bit on the expensive side, we use it at least once every day, so to me – it is priceless!

Every night I scoop 3/4 cup steel cut oats into the rice cooker bowl, and top it with 2.75 cups water (or sometimes a mix of water and coffee – yum!).  One portion of the steel cut oats is actually 1/4 cup, but I don’t think it fills me up enough, so Casey and I split the extra serving.  Then I close the top, put it on the porridge setting, and set the timer for 5am (on weekdays).

When I wake up, the rice cooker sings to me (seriously), and inside I have this…

Which looks like this, when it’s all stirred up and gooey.  (Please excuse the early morning shadows in the pictures!)

Depending on the morning, time, what sounds good, etc. – I will make different variations of oatmeal.  Today, banana sounded good.  I slice mine down the middle first, so that the chunks aren’t so big.  Then I chop it up into bite sized pieces.

Next is the most important part – the creation of the hot gooey PB2 topping.  It starts with the food scale, one of my most frequently used kitchen products.  So much that it sits out on our counter permanently!

I weigh out the PB2, or Chocolate PB2 in this case (still waiting for UPS to bring me more!), to exactly 24 grams – two servings.  Using a food scale is so much more accurate than using measuring cups, and it’s a great way to be sure that I’m not over-portioning, which is so easy to do.

Next I add the water, and I purposely make it runny and soupy.  Stir, stir, stir!

Then I pop it into the microwave for 30 seconds, take it out and stir, pop it in for 30 more seconds, stir again, and a final 30 seconds (90 seconds total, but make sure you stir in between or it will BURN!), and give it a final stir.  It comes out piping hot and thick, like hot peanut butter icing!

Once our oatmeal has been portioned out (again using the food scale to make sure we are even!), I drizzle the PB2 topping over the top.

My very favorite part of making breakfast is eating the extra PB2 topping with my finger at the end!  :)

The last thing I added was a giant blob of Crofter’s Superfruit Spread – this stuff is seriously delicious!!  We already polished off the first jar, so today we moved on to Black Currants and Pomegranate spread, mmmmm.  My only complaint about these jellies is that I wish the jars were BIGGER!  Between PB&J oatmeal every day, and PB&J sandwiches for lunch, we are blowing through these…

So there you have it.  My perfect bowl of oatmeal.  With my magical rice cooker, I wake up to perfectly cooked and piping hot steel cut oats every morning.  All I have to do is decide which toppings to use!

And speaking of Superfruit, check back later today for an exciting GIVEAWAY post!  For now, I’m going to enjoy being snowed in and see if there’s any room for me in this blanket ball…