Most of my Enthusiasts are found through the #oatmealartist tag on Instagram or the Oatmeal Artist Facebook page. However, Charlotte was a friend of mine before TOA. In fact, if my memory serves me correctly, she even helped me name it! After posting several oatmeal recipes on my first blog, I told her that I thought I had “found my calling.” She agreed. I then threw out a million possibilities for new blog names, and she helped me narrow them down. So yeah, we go back. Anyway, recently Charlotte’s been telling me about all the oatmeal she has been eating, and I immediately began begging her to be my Enthusiast. 🙂
Hello! My name is Charlotte, and I love oatmeal. I first met Lauren online about 10 years ago because we were both massive fans of Sasha Cohen, and over the next 10 years we discovered many other common interests, the biggest of which is that we both have careers involved in education, and both absolutely love food – oatmeal in particular. I remember the earliest days of Lauren’s blogging, before she created The Oatmeal Artist, and I remember the early days of The Oatmeal Artist as well. Watching it become a huge success has been a lot of fun, and I am so incredibly proud of her!
I can’t remember the first time I tried one of her recipes, but I know it was when she was still writing that earlier blog, and I remember being amazed by her ingenuity. As she transitioned over to The Oatmeal Artist, I began trying her ever-increasing variety of recipes on and off throughout the years. I started telling all my college friends to look up The Oatmeal Artist and try her recipes whenever they were lamenting their inability to make decent breakfast food. I remember that many of them would laugh, and then come back a few days later to tell me how utterly amazed they were that you could do so many things with oatmeal!
For the last two school years, I had an incredibly stressful job that left me feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, and angry all the time. I gained 20 lbs while I worked there. At the end of June, I left, and in August started a new job doing what I love most – teaching choir to middle schoolers. I’m much happier now, and when I started the job on August 3rd I also started a new diet and exercise plan to get rid of all the excess weight (and hopefully go even further!). Whenever I start over again on my on-and-off health crusade I always go back to oatmeal, because it works. A bowl of oatmeal in the morning is not only healthy and filling, but incredibly delicious. I never feel like I’m missing out when I eat oatmeal, and I’ve always felt that that has to be the key to make life changes that actually stick.
Lauren’s always been very supportive of my attempts to be a better me, and I’m endlessly grateful for that. Below are the bowls I made during this week. You’ll notice that I’m not very innovative, or fancy. They all look very similar. I mostly just really like nut butters and berries. When I taught in China for a year, the only American food I could consistently find was peanut butter, so I always had a jar on the counter for bouts of homesickness. I never really realize how much I loved peanut butter until it became my American touchstone.
Monday – Triple-Almond Oatmeal
I eat this a lot. It’s simple and it works. Almond milk, almond butter, and slivered almonds with some maple syrup (my sweet tooth is much larger than Lauren’s and I’ve never been able to totally skip sweeteners the way she can), salt, vanilla, and lots of cinnamon! I absolutely adore cinnamon and add much larger quantities of it than is normally listed in recipes on TOA. Also, you’ll notice a cup of tea in all of these, somewhere in the background. Earl Grey is my favorite thing forever. Continue reading →
