Invention through sloth: a recipe for lazy people who really would like to eat a healthy breakfast but can’t manage it

We don’t stop hearing about oats — they’re full of fiber so they’re good for your digestion and your bowels, they contain beta-glucans that help cut cholesterol and spread the rise in blood sugar over a long period of time, they make you feel full for longer so they encourage weight loss, they are anticarcinogenic thanks to their phytochemicals — and the list goes on.

Confession to my mother and request for forgiveness

I try and eat my oats every day, really I do. It has always been one of my mother’s Golden Rules of Healthy Eating. But Mom, I have to tell you: sometimes I just don’t, because I’m absolutely, unequivocally not a morning person and I just can’t get it together to cook the oats the good old-fashioned Scottish way we might all prefer.

So Mom, to relieve this deep guilt I have lived with my entire adult life, I found the solution, though I admit more by sloth than by wit. It was one of those days when no one was to speak to me before noon. I decided to pour some dry steel-cut oats into a bowl and eat them dry, in order to avoid the risk of pouring milk all over the stovetop instead of into the pan it was meant for, and then adding oats and other necessary ingredients into the milk that was already running down the front of the kitchen cabinets (I have already experienced this and it is not a good way to start the day). I was absolutely incapable of giving them the loving care they so deserve.

Recipe for cappuccino oats

So with a sad bowl of dry oats before me, right alongside a perfect cappuccino I had somehow managed to make in the midst of all those morning clouds, I had the brilliant idea of pouring my cappuccino (I make large ones in a café au lait cup, pretty much half coffee and and half foamy milk) over my oats and mixing them together. I had already added my desired amount of sugar (well, actually I cheated and once again went against all my principles and used artificial sugar), and voilà, I invented an absolutely delicious dish which I shall name “cappuccino oats”.

If you are not a morning person, and you often feel deep guilt about not eating your morning oats, I thoroughly recommend trying this. It might take a few tries before you get the proportions to your liking, but it is certainly better than no breakfast at all.

I use a Bialetti stovetop coffee maker, a Nespresso foamer, and a Trisa coffee grinder, with coffee beans bought from Les Rois Mages in Chartres because they roast the beans just to my liking.

We all have different types of equipment and like our cappuccino with more milk or less milk. All that really counts is that your equipment makes a cappuccino to your liking.