January may be National Oatmeal Month, but in my humble opinion, these grains deserve our adulation year-round. After all, there’s no better way to start the day than a steamy bowl of cooked oats topped with, well, anything you can imagine! Blueberries, bananas, raisins, almonds, peanut butter (yes, peanut butter), walnuts, brown sugar, honey, butter … the possibilities of combinations are endless and delicious. But even if you can’t get on the oatmeal-for-breakfast bandwagon, that doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate rolled oats with the rest of us. They have purposes far beyond the a.m. shift that benefit more than just heart health and satiety (both of which are due to oats’ high fiber content). With their many uses in culinary, beauty, and crafting endeavors, oats are diverse enough to play an important part in everyone’s daily routine.
Take a Walk on the Savory Side
Oatmeal is traditionally thought of as a sweet breakfast food, but it’s actually as versatile as any grain. If the idea of a sugar rush in the morning is unappealing to your stomach, why not try a savory version of oatmeal? It’s a controversial idea, but one that Mark Bittman, food aficionado of the New York Times, has been championing as of late. He’s written about mixing soy sauce and scallions with cooked oats in a congee (an Asian porridge-style dish), or with olive oil and tapenade. Sounds strange, but think of what plain oatmeal tastes like—the answer is, not much. Like plain rice or grits, it serves as a building block for any number of flavors. And like grits, oatmeal’s enjoyable with cheese and/or a fried egg on top.
Some people don’t like the texture of oatmeal, but oats themselves can be used in other dishes. When ground up in a food processer, oats become oat flour, a great substitution for all-purpose flour in recipes. Not only does oat flour offer more nutrients than white flour, but it has less calories, too (120, compared with 152 in a one-third-cup serving). It also works well in recipes that call for grains as a thickening or binding agent, such as meatloaf, meatballs, homemade burger patties, casseroles, chili, and so forth. Oats are a useful replacement for bread crumbs and a good coating for prefried foods as well.
Skin Solutions for Everyone
Oats can make your insides and your outside healthy and happy. Inside these grains lie saponins, which act as natural cleansers when mixed with water. Not only do oats soothe dry and itchy skin, but the natural protein in them also helps lock in moisture. There’s a reason why oats are listed as ingredients in a number of lotions and skin creams—but luckily for us, there are less expensive ways to enjoy their skin-restoring properties.
Make colloidal oatmeal—that’s oats ground into powder—and put it in the foot part of an old pair of nylons or in a piece of cheesecloth. Immerse the bundle in hot bathwater and soak in the goodness for twenty to thirty minutes. This treat is especially good for sufferers of chicken pox, rashes, eczema, and itchy, dry skin. Even if your skin’s not too sensitive, add milk and honey to an oat bath for an enhanced softening experience.
Oats are a great base for homemade facial masks. The other ingredients depend on skin type (for example, oily-skinned people shouldn’t go for egg yolks, and dry-skinned people should avoid egg whites), but simply mixing colloidal oatmeal with water so that it becomes a paste makes a good all-around mask. It scrubs pores clean and helps get rid of dead skin.
No time to jump in the shower? Supposedly, colloidal oats and baking powder make dry shampoo, which you can rub through your hair and shake out to make it appear less greasy.
Oats aren’t just beneficial for human complexions—dogs enjoy it, too! If your pup has itchy skin, mix water and colloidal oatmeal together and put it in a cloth bag, gently rubbing it on problem areas for a few minutes.
Breaking the Mold with Crafts
Sure, oatmeal’s tasty and oats are great for the skin, but did you know they encourage creativity, too? Combined with the right ingredients, they help form anything from bowls to bars of soap.
The Disney Family Fun Web site has a recipe for modeling clay involving oats, water, flour, and food coloring. The clay stays moldable for hours if kept in the fridge, but will harden overnight.
Take little cloth bags and fill them with dried herbs, oats, and a small amount of shaved soap. Give them out as gifts to friends and tell them the soap bags are just like mini-sponges or washcloths.
If the oat canister’s exhausted from previous oat adventures, repurpose it as a container for other goods, such as pasta, flour, nail polish, small toys, and so on. You can also decorate it with pretty paper and use it as a gift box.
If all of this doesn’t propel you toward the closest grocery store, consider this: a 2005 study at Brigham Young University found that twenty-eight-year-old oats were not only edible, but still slightly palatable! Participants rated them as about average on a taste scale, and 75 percent of them said they’d be fine in an emergency. You’d be hard pressed to say that about most foods after almost thirty years of shelf time, but therein lies yet another magical quality of oats. Be they fuel for the day ahead, a hearty grain filler for a dinner dish, a soothing application for the skin, or a fun activity for kids, oats deserve a spot in all of our lives. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a bowl of blueberry–almond butter oatmeal that needs my attention.