<3 pEaNuT bUtTeR!~!~!~

When I found out I had high cholesterol, one of the things that was suggested was to eat more oatmeal, or anything made from oats. (I know we've all seen the Cheerio's commercials about lowering your cholesterol if you eat like 500 bowls of Cheerio's every day for the rest of your life.)

Which, you know, was no big deal. Oatmeal's good. But--my idea of "oatmeal" was a sugar-doused flavored product. Even when my mom made me real Quaker Oats as a kid, I put a lot, a lot, of brown sugar on it. Like it was essentially sugar with a coupla lone oats tossed in.

So what to do now? How to make it appetizing without reversing the health benefits? I started by adding raisins, which plump when you cook them and add some natural sweetness, but I couldn't help but sprinkle a packet of Splenda on there too. When I became a little more informed and thus wary of artificial sweeteners, I stuck to just raisins. And it was okay, but I honestly had to force myself to make it. Like I would never wake up craving it, or even really wanting it, but I would shove it down my gullet anyway, reminding myself of its artery unclogging powers.

Then this past summer, I was at Kelsey's house one morning and she was making oatmeal for me, her, and her boyfriend George. When she asked George what he wanted in his, he said peanut butter. I remember doing a double take. Peanut butter? In oatmeal? I asked her who the hell she thought she was mixing these two things. She laughed at me.

Since then, I've embarked on a love affair with the union of these two previously disparate foods. I was already shacking up with peanut butter, have been for a long time. But now oatmeal's invited, and for the first time I really want him there.

If you've never had this, and you like peanut butter, I'd definitely recommend giving it a try. I mix about a half cup of oats with a cup of skim milk (but you can make however much you want) and usually just pop it in the microwave, but if you are cooking for more than one person, I'd recommend the stove. Then mix in about a tablespoon of peanut butter while the oatmeal's hot and it will sort of just dissolve. This breakfast has about 18 grams of protein (if you make it with skim milk, which I don't know how anyone eats it with water without barfing), about 335 calories, and, yes, about 11 grams of fat, but only about 1 1/2 grams are saturated; the rest are either polyunsaturated or monounsaturated (the good-for-your-heart kind.)

And if you use almond butter instead of pb, its extra monounsaturated fats serve up a double whammy sucker punch to lower LDL cholesterol (the bad one). Unfortunately, almond butter is a quite a bit more expensive. Thus far I have only picked it up wistfully in the grocery store, set it back on the shelf with a sigh, and slowly pushed my cart down the aisle, looking over my shoulder with big, cartoonish eyes. Someday, we will be united.