Coconut Oatmeal

First of all, helllloooo 2012!! I hope everyone had a blast this holiday season! :) And I wish everyone a very very wonderful new year!

I have a very good feeling about 2012. At least, I can tell it will bring many many changes. 

Whether these changes will be good or bad, I do not know. But I welcome changes. Change always bears a meaning that something new is coming. Of course, something ends as well but this is how life works. In my mind, I connect change with good. I guess, I am just a sucker for changes :)

For me changes have already started. I had to move out from my apartment, say goodbye to my roommate as a roommate. Say hello to my family in a daily basis again...

Since I am home now, at least for a short while, we decided to rearrange the whole house. Now it looks like as if we all moved to a new house :) Love it!

I also decided that I need to get back to the healthy lifestyle I used to have. Meaning I need to cut out refined sugar. Not all together. But the holiday season certainly did not do any good to my hips... So I am not eating sugar for one week. I know it's not much but for someone who ate something sweet each day it's not that easy. Besides, I just gotta start somewhere ;) Also, minimize my sodium intake. Just to lose some excess water in my system. It's not real weight I'll be losing but still, it'll make me happy to be a few pounds lighter... 

Having our oven in the service is a much help, too :) Anytime I feel like I just need to bake something I realize I can't! Yay! Good diet :)

This is why I created this coconut oatmeal recipe. It's probably the easiest thing ever to make but it has such a refreshing taste to the same ol' oatmeal. In fact, I have to seriously force myself to eat that small bowl of oatmeal in the morning. I pretty much despise it, but not this coconut one!!! AND it had no sugar in it at all. NONE. Of course, you can add some if you like but it's not necessary. Or add half a banana in. Actually, I was supposed to have a banana oatmeal but apparently my family ate it (even though they "hate bananas") so in my desperation I started looking for something in the pantry to add to the oatmeal. 

Coconut Oatmeal

for 1 person

1/2 cup oatmeal - I used an oatmeal mix that had 4 kinds of grain flakes like oat, rye,     buckwheat and barley

1 cup water

1/4 unsweetened shredded coconut

a pinch of coconut chips if you have

vanilla

optional: 1 teaspoon cane sugar or 1/2 mashed banana

Add the water in a small cooking bowl. Stir in the oatmeal and cook it for 6-8 minutes. You can add some salt but I did not. Add in the vanilla. When it's almost ready, add in the coconut and place a lid on top of the bowl and let it sit for 5 minutes. If you sweeten it then add the sugar or mashed banana at the same time as the coconut. If you want it creamier then add 1/4 cup almond milk in.