Oatmeal, glorious oatmeal

I love oatmeal - cooked up warm, baked and crunchy, in museli, sprinkled dry on pancakes (however it comes), I always love my oatmeal. Lately, in an attempt to get more veggies into my day, I've started to add beets into my morning bowl. I've experimented with kale, pumpkin and spinach too...but nothing gives quite the delightful flavor of blended beets - plus - I love the colour it produces!! Obviously, no one wants to mess around with cooking beets every morning, so I've developed the weekly practice of boiling up a bunch of beets in order to have them ready for the week for breakfasts (and lunches - for my husband, who likes to put them in his salads.)

So - how does it work in oatmeal? Here's my "recipe":

1/2 cup cooked beet cubes and 1/4 cup greek yogurt or cottage cheese (blend these two together with just over 1 cup of water in your mini blender before adding the next ingredients)

1/3 cup old fashioned oats

1/4 tsp salt

2 TBSP PB2 powder (optional - sometimes I add in 1 TBSP of cocoa, or a tsp of cinnamon, vanilla, however you like to flavor it)

Shake it all up together then let this sit over night in your fridge. Heat it up in the morning and top with all kinds of goodness - bananas, seeds, nuts, berries...you get the idea!

So - why beets? Beets are full of goodness - by adding a 1/2 cup of beets, I'm getting a dose of folate, potassium, magnesium, selenium...and all kinds of other minerals and vitamins. There's even research that suggests that beet juice, due to its nitrates, may actually improve endurance in athletes. How do you get your veggies in each morning?