This oatmeal breakfast cake is dense and satisfying. Use quick-cooking oats and they’ll dissolve into the batter, use old-fashioned oats for more texture. We like it best with chocolate chips, but it’d be delish with your favorite fruit baked in, too!

I just walked in the door from an impromptu trip to Nashville, TN (I live in Minnesota, remember).
This is the fourth year that my eldest son has participated in a week long service oriented mission team. In past years, they’ve served in Louisiana, South Carolina and Indiana– and this year they are in Nashville.
The group’s focus is threefold:
- They serve at the host church, doing projects like putting in sidewalks and building sheds.
- They visit various ministries in the area and not only learn about them, but serve with them. (Yesterday, they worked at a community garden and harvested over 1,200 pounds of potatoes!)
- They have classes that help them dig in to how God has made them, and how they can step into service and leadership in their home church and community.
A week before the trip was scheduled to begin, the lady who has always done all of their meal planning and preparation had to have emergency surgery. Since my college roommate and dear friend is one of the leaders of the trip, we were chatting about it and I mentioned that I couldn’t come for the whole week, but could come down and feed them the first few days, and get meals prepped for the rest of the week.
So that’s what I did.

I remember going to Chi-Chi’s Mexican restaurant when I was a kid. Every once in a while my parents would treat us to a dessert and we would each get a spoon to dig in to the shared order of fried ice cream. The novelty factor was certainly part of the enjoyment. Ice cream that is fried in hot oil?! But it was the perfect mix of crunchy and creamy, hot and cold, spicy and sweet that was the real homerun.


