As a Peace Corps Volunteer in Swaziland, I have a limited food budget. But I also love food–both eating and making it. During PST, I cooked without an oven, refrigeration, and a non-stick skillet. Now at my permanent site, I have all three, though at a cost. This occasional series will highlight my cooking and baking and the recipes I use.

I woke up today to an overflowing water filter with the water running down the side of my refrigerator, pooling on the floor. Fortunately all of my food on the floor near the water was either in glass or plastic, except for the oats.

About half of the container was moist and about a quarter of the oats. I spread them out to dry, but knew I needed to find a way to use some of them. In comes the oatmeal muffin.

I found this recipe a few weeks ago when looking for muffins and desserts made with the ingredients I have on hand, and this one was one of the easiest. These require no baking skills and can be personalized with additions like nuts (if only they were not so expensive here!), raisins, cranberries, apples, or chocolate.

Total time: 1 hour and 30 minutes

Makes: 15 muffins

What do you need:

• Stoven
• Mixing bowl
• Small bowl
• Cup
• Fork
• Spatula
• Measuring cups
• Muffin tin or reusable muffin cups

Oatmeal muffin ingredients:

• 1 C milk or 1 C water plus 3 tablespoons Nespray or other powdered milk
• 1 C oats (need to be the quick cooking kind, like Jungle Oats)
• 1 egg
• 1/4 C oil
• 1 C self-rising flour
• 1/4 C sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon (or more or less depending on your love of cinnamon)

Oatmeal muffin recipe:

1. Preheat oven to 220* C.
2. Combine milk and oats and let soak for 15 minutes.
3. In a cup, mix egg and oil and add to oat mixture.
4. In a small bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Add to wet ingredients and mix with fork until just combined. Add any additions such as raisins.
5. Spoon into muffin cups until 2/3 full.
6. Bake six muffins at a time for 19 minutes. Rotate rack in stoven half way through the baking time.

I ate the muffin with peanut butter spread on each half, which was quite tasty. The muffins are great for a quick snack and I am sure they are even better with raisins or apples. I will try that the next time.

Recipe is adapted from http://www.andthenwesaved.com.