I Think I Smell A Rat

Some of you may know that I am a first-year nursing student. What some of you may not know is that once a week, my area of study requires that I wake up at an ungodly hour to go work in a clinical setting to get some hands-on nursing practice. I love what I do - I just wish it were a little later in the day. I have to be out the door by 5:25, which means that every minute I am awake before that time is a minute that I am not sleeping. Basically, time is of the essence, but because I'm me I still feel the need to maintain my normal morning routine, which so happens to include breakfast. So to save on time I make my breakfast the night before so I can simply pop it into the microwave, scarf it down, and walk out the door. Normally I make some variation on this recipe, but I decided to try something new.

I stumbled across this recipe on Pinterest (of course) and thought I would give it a shot. What drew me to this recipe was the lack of refined sugars and flour (wheat isn't really that good for you folks). It has a nice mixture of fiber from the oats, protein from the nut butter and egg, vitamins from the banana, and deliciousness from the chocolate chips. It proved to be a winner.

Chocolate chips. Yum.

This recipe is nice and filling (I ate breakfast around 4:50 and I was not hungry when I left clinical at 11). It's also nice because the texture and the flavors of the nut butter and banana can hide the presence of some healthy additions (I added some psyllium husk leftover from another recipe in place of some of the flour). It was also nice because I made it right after getting off the phone with a mechanic I visited a couple of weeks ago and did not replace my rear hubcaps correctly after doing some expensive repairs on the brakes. They definitely came off while I was driving so I was trying to get the mechanic to pay for replacement hubcaps. I'm a stress eater so I gorged in peanut butter and chocolate chips while I was cooking and singing this song in my head:

The original recipe is vegan and can very easily be made gluten free. However, I decided to substitute some ingredients with what I had on hand. Here's my version:

1 very ripe medium banana, mashed
1 tsp baking powder
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp peanut butter
1 tbsp canola oil (always choose canola over vegetable oil - it has valuable omega 3 fatty acids)
3 tbsp milk
1/2 c rolled oats
3 tbsp whole wheat flour
1 tbsp psyllium husk

All you really do is mix everything together and then cook them like regular pancakes. The batter will be very thick so don't be surprised when you have to spoon it into the pan instead of pouring it in. These took me about 20 minutes from start to finish. I did chocolate chips with half and blueberries with the other half. You could probably add chia seeds, flax seeds, or whatever else to the batter. 

Mm...blueberries.

 Long story short: eat these. And don't go the Meineke on State Street.