Muesli , A Hot Or Cold Whole Grain Cereal

I think that I have tried muesli before, but I really didn’t know anything about it, and just poured some in a bowl and added milk, like you would any other cold cereal.
However, upon reading more about muesli, it can be eaten either as a hot cereal, a cold cereal, or as one of the overnight-oats type of cereal.
It is made of several kinds of whole grains, plus dried fruits like dates and raisins, and also some seeds and nuts.

Now that it is cold weather, I am having hot cereal in the mornings again, and was going to order more of the 5-grain cereal from Bob’s Red Mill, and while browsing, saw the muesli, and ordered that instead.
Does anyone else eat muesli, and do you eat it hot or cold ?

 

I think I tried it years ago when it first hit the popular scene, but must not have been impressed since I never bought it again.

Have you done nutrition comparisons to see how it stacks up against other cereals?

 

I have not done any real kind of comparison, but it has about the same ingredients as the 5-grain cereal I bought before, plus it has the seeds (sunflower and flax) and some dates, raisins, almonds and walnuts.
I usually add apples and raisins to my hot oats anyway, and will probably cook this with fresh apple slices as well.

The first time I had some, I was expecting something that tasted like granola, which it definitely did not; so I think that is why I never tried it again. I just poured it into a bowl and added milk, and it was kind of like having raw oatmeal with stuff in it.

Here is an interesting short article about Dr. Bircher-Benner , the Swill dietician who first developed muesli for his health clinic patients.

https://emmerogers.com/2020/01/bircher-muesli-recipe-and-history/

 

I've gone around and around on the high fiber stuff and settled on the steel cut oats you spoke of earlier and on Quaker Oat Squares. They have 5 grams of fiber (2 of them soluble) and 30 grams of other carbs, excluding sugars. I always throw strawberries and blueberries on top, adding blackberries if I happen to have them on hand.

 

My muesli arrived yesterday, and I mixed up the first batch to soak last night, for breakfast this morning. Even though we think of muesli as a breakfast food, when Dr. Bircher-Benner developed muesli, he actually served it as a starter for every meal for the patients in his health sanatorium.
He used whole rolled oats, dried chopped fruits, seeds, and nuts, and fresh raw apples.
Originally, he called it his apple meal (or a similar name) because the raw apples were the main part of the muesli, and not the grain part, which we think of as the main part now.

Since it is pretty cold, I did not want to eat my muesli straight out of the refrigerator, so I added the fresh chopped apples and warmed everything up just enough that it was hot enough to eat, but not actually cooked like we would do with regular oatmeal.

Here is my morning bowl of muesli, with a little milk and extra cinnamon on top. You can see how fresh the apples still look, even though I heated them up.
It tastes pretty good !
I like the added flavor of more dried fruits, like the dates and raisins.
I am going to get some of the tropical trail mix, which has dried papaya, mango, and other tropical fruits, as well as some nuts and seeds. Then I will chop it small enough to add some of that to the muesli, and it should have a very interesting flavor with the papaya and mango chunks.

 

Mew Cuss?

 

I have really started to enjoy this muesli stuff ! I found that I do not care for the overnight oats at all, it is just too long of a soak for me, although it might work okay with the steel cut oats instead of the rolled oats.
What I have been doing is chopping up my apple into bits by adding it to the blender with some milk, and then putting that overtop of the muesli and adding a little sweetening and spices.
I only let it sit long enough for the milk/apple to start to soak in, and then I eat it.
It is still a cold breakfast, but I like how it tastes, and look forward to having it .

I am also adding some of the muesli to the mix when I make the fiber cakes (quickbread) with carrots, cooked sweet potatoes, apples or other fruit or vegetables that I like in the cake.
Since I add flax and chia seeds, as well as psyllium husks, to the cake mix, we have something that both Bobby and I enjoy and also get plenty of fiber.

 

It is the time for hot breakfasts again, I am done with cold Raisin Bran for the winter. So, today, I went over what hot cereals we have and stocked up on some new ones for this winter.
Bobby, being from the South, loves grits.
I thought he still has some that he had not used from last winter, but apparently we didn’t; so I ordered him some of the Bob’s Red Mill stone ground organic yellow corn grits/polenta.

My flaxseed meal arrived today, and I have that put in a sealed container and in the refrigerator to keep it fresh, and I ordered some hot wheat cereal that is called “Zoom”, and it is similar to the old Ralston cereal. It is about $40 for 3 little bags of Ralston cereal, so I browsed through Amazon to see what else was similar and had good reviews.
So, we should be set up for a good variety of hot cereal for this winter. We still have regular oatmeal, steel cut oats, and muesli.

What kinds of breakfast cereals do other people here enjoy for breakfast ?

 

Although I am not from the South, I like grits too, but I usually only have them now when we're eating breakfast at Cracker Barrel and, since the only Cracker Barrel in Maine is in South Portland, in the damned near Boston part of Maine, that's not very often.

I don't know that I have a favorite cereal because I buy a different kind pretty much every time I buy cereal. Nothing with a bunch of sugar in it, and that rules out most of them. I get in the mood for cold cereal for a couple of weeks every five or six months, then I don't think of cereal anymore for a long while. I don't mind things like oatmeal, Farina, or Cream of Wheat, but I don't have them often.

I can't remember if I've ever tasted Muesli.