Oatmeal is healthy and wholesome.
Well, at least that’s what Wilfred Brimley and the guy who yells at fat people on NBC tell me. But just like wholesome Amish kids during rumspringa, oatmeal can get wild, crazy, and do unhealthy things as well.
For example, instead of using skim milk or water to make my oatmeal, I use melted ice cream and then top that with crushed Heath candy bar pieces, Hershey chocolate syrup. a small bag of M&M’s, and half a container of Cool Whip.
That sounds totally diabeteeriffic!
I can corrupt oatmeal to the point where you would have to start calling it ho-meal. But it appears Quaker has done the corrupting for me with their new chocolate chip instant oatmeal.
Okay, they haven’t really done any corrupting because there aren’t many semisweet chocolate chips in each instant oatmeal packet.
If you’d like to teach your child how to count using the chocolate chips in each packet, you’re going to have to open a number of packets to equal the level of learning your child will get from watching an episode of Sesame Street, because each one contains four or five chocolate chips. And they’re not big chocolate chips. They make the oats in each packet look bigger than they really are.
I made a bowl of Quaker Chocolate Chip Instant Oatmeal using vanilla soy milk and another using filtered water. Using filtered water is healthier, but using vanilla soy milk makes it taste better. But if you read on, that’s not saying much.
The chocolate chips take awhile to melt, and after they do, the oatmeal looks chocolatey. As you can see above, the liquid looks like the milk at the bottom of the bowl after eating Cocoa Puffs, but that liquid is a liar.
A dirty stinkin’ liar!
The chocolate flavor is almost non-existent. It has less flavor than the other Quaker flavored instant oatmeal varieties I’ve had. I wish Quaker had put a little hot cocoa powder in their Chocolate Chip Instant Oatmeal to make things tolerable. So it looks like, in order to get through the rest of the box, I’m going to have to make this oatmeal tolerable on my own with some cocoa power, semisweet chocolate chips, M&M’s, crushed Oreo cookies, Hershey’s chocolate syrup, chocolate sprinkles, crushed Butterfinger candy pieces, Hershey’s Kisses, and melted Häagen-Dazs chocolate ice cream.
(Nutrition Facts – 1 packet – 130 calories, 20 calories from fat, 2 grams of fat, 0.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0.5 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 1 gram of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 150 milligrams of sodium, 26 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 8 grams of sugar, 16 grams of other carbohydrates, and 3 grams of protein.)
Item: Quaker Chocolate Chip Instant Oatmeal
Price: $3.29
Size: 10 packets/1.23 ounces each
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Quick to make. Good source of whole grains. Rumspringa. Sesame Street. Decent source of fiber. Low in fat.
Cons: Really faint chocolate flavor. Really small chocolate chips. Not many chocolate chips in each packet. The liquid in the oatmeal is a liar, a dirty stinkin’ liar! Using the chocolate chips to teach your child to count won’t get him or her very far unless you open several packets.
I suppose they couldn’t get away with using very many chocolate chips in this oatmeal if they wanted to maintain the product’s “healthy and wholesome” image. So on the plus side, people won’t feel guilty about eating this chocolate chip oatmeal… but if you really want it to taste like chocolate chips, you’ll need to add a few of your own (therefore negating the oatmeal’s “healthy” status).
For some reason the picture on the box made me laugh, with the scoop of chocolate chips in the background… it reminded me of the scoops of raisins in the pictures on boxes of raisin bran. Can you envision it? “Kellogg’s Chocolate Chip Bran… now with TWO SCOOPS of chocolate chips!” THEY NEED TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN.
They could’ve used that fake chocolate that’s in that chocolate delight Special K and a bunch of Special K snack bars.
i had more success with this stuff
http://www.betteroats.com/oats/lavish/dark_chocolate/
I’ve seen the brand, but sadly I haven’t seen that flavor.
*sigh* ohhh quaker. the only instant oatmeal I love is the dinosaur egg one. hahahhaa
Dinosaur Eggs? Blech.
I agree with rod. That oatmeal is really good. My only problem is that my local grocery stores don’t carry any of that brand anymore. It’s a shame because all of their products were amazing for instant oatmeal.
The Safeways near me offer the brand, but they don’t offer that chocolate flavor. Me sad.
I quite like some of the other instant oatmeal varieties and you seem to get so many different ones, couldnt the chocolate chips just melt as well if theres so few of them? Just making it a chocolate oatmeal?
Because this is America, where we’re given more choices than we didn’t know we wanted. 🙂
I usually just make my oatmeal with raisins. Sometimes if I’m in a weird mood I mix it with yogurt.
I make mine with raisins and honey. Or I’ll throw in a hot cocoa packet.
The best way to eat Quaker Oats oatmeal packets (or others) is with no water at all. Just mush up the dry stuff with some butter or tasty oil ( haven’t tried coconut oil yet but my bet is that it would be divine). Add some sugar or other sweetener to taste. Eat happily with spoon or finger.
By the way, if you don’t like standard oatmeal (with water) and find this way too decadent, Nairn’s makes great oat crackers (coarse and fine). Just oats, some oil, salt, and leavening. Good all by themselves. I figure 3 or 4 of them are probably equivalent to one of those oatmeal packets. And you can follow this site’s Amazon link (making Marvo happy) and buy them by the case on subscribe&save…