A recipe from the Westin Bay Shore, Vancouver, BC.

I like cereal for breakfast. But I don’t like heavily processed cereals with a lot of mystery ingredients and sugar.

So when I was staying at the Westin in Vancouver last week, I decided to give the muesli item on their breakfast menu a try. One taste and I was hooked. I had it every morning of my stay. And on the last morning, the waitress offered the recipe.

Ingredients:
1 cup uncooked oatmeal (not instant)
2 tablespoons honey
1/4 cup raisins (they used golden raisins)
1/4 cup canned peaches, drained and cut into bite-sized pieces
1 cup (or more) half and half or milk
2 cups fresh fruit like bananas, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries

Instructions:
Mix the first five ingredients in a bowl. Cover and refrigerate overnight. In the morning, right around breakfast time, the oats should have absorbed all of the half and half or milk. In fact, if the resulting mixture is too dry, you can moisten it up a bit by adding more half and half or milk. The raisins will be plump, too. Dish out the mixture and top with the fresh fruit. Enjoy!

One note here: The recipe I got called for a mixture of cream and whole milk. That’s half and half, isn’t it? The waitress also said you can cut calories and fat by using just milk. If you do this, use whole milk — I don’t think lowfat milk would make the result as creamy and rich.