Oat May 4, 2009

Before I went ahead and spent two months living somewhere not my flat most of the time, I wondered about what facilities would be available to me there and how easy it would be for me to cook and store anything decent. It all turned out very well, both the available facilities (the freezer has some door-issues, but is still usable) and the totally cool and considerate omnis, but before I was able to find this out I figured I might as well go prepared.
Make sure I at least had a decent start to my days.

Some time ago Dino had an episode of his podcast in which he shared some ideas on how to have easy meals when traveling. Apart from saying things that made me want a rice cooker like crazy, he talked about little bags or containers or whatever you have containing quick-cook oatmeal with little additions that would become a decent breakfast or snack after adding some hot water.
I first went with this idea some time ago, when we went to Germany with the band again (and again I didn’t come across any falafel places. Saw lots of snow, though, which more than made up for it), mostly trying it to have something decently filling in case the catered foods weren’t too vegan.
Something where I could just add hot water.
I didn’t have much hope for a decent taste, but I could live with that provided it filed up my belly nicely.
Turns out my combination of things to mix in with the oats gave me something that was actually quite tasty, even with just hot water added, so I thought that might be a nice thing to bring along now.
Hot water tends to be easy to come by.

The things I used for this easy breakfast mix:
-Oats. The quick-cook sort that only requires a minute or so of boiling/microwaving.
-Dried things. Raisins, goji berries, dried red date bits I got at an Asian supermarket.
-Crunchy things. Mixed nuts, sunflower seeds, some more things from an Asian supermarket, like foxnuts, lily seeds(? something lily-like, anyway), and thin little almonds.
-Powdery things. Cocoa, cinnamon.

Basically what you do is put the desired amounts of each thing in a container with a good lid, shake it around for a bit to mix it up properly, and take it with you when you think it might come in handy. You can play with the additions for a bit, see what you like and what you can find.
I used a 1.2L flat Curver container which got me through the first two weeks with a few breakfasts left.
As for final preparations, in Germany I put a little bit in a plastic tumbler with a decent seal, shook it a bit (decent seal, yeah? Important), let it soak for a few minutes, and ate it.
Around here I just put some in a bowl, added some boiled water, and it stand for a bit while I took a shower before eating it.

Not only properly filling, but quite tasty too. Yay.
It’s likely to become a standard food to bring along to places where getting a decent vegan meal might not be that easy. I always used to take along some handy packets of salt, pepper, and ketchup, maybe some insta-soup, but this will make a nice addition to my survival kit.

As a bonus, a picture of a bell pepper I found in the supermarket recently. I didn’t intend to buy any, but I couldn’t resist this one. One side solid green, the other side wholly red.
It made me happy.
Not the same kind of happy as a humourously-shaped carrot would, but that’s fine. Happy’s good.

Some administrative things. Soon I will shut down the fandom veganism blog. I don’t have the time to properly maintain it, so I’ll just move the two posts here and see where it goes. I still very much like the idea of a blog like that, though. If someone else is setting one up and wants contributions I might just add my bit, but for now any fannish veganism will be posted here.