[Recipe] "Sweet Morning After" Strawberry Banana Almond Overnight Oats

I'm never grouchy in the mornings.  For real.  I might snooze or lounge fifteen minutes longer than I should, but I never wake up on the "wrong side" of bed, so to speak.  Of course, that's kind of hard to do when you have this most adorable of puppies to wake up to each morning: 

But there is one thing that can frazzle me: running behind schedule and, of course, not having enough time to eat.  It's usually not a problem—it's easy enough to eat a banana and some yogurt or a bowl of cereal, but I like to change it up sometimes when it comes to the most important meal of the day, and I don't always have the time to cook before heading to work.

Enter, overnight oats.

"Sweet Morning After" Strawberry Banana Almond Overnight Oats
an original recipe by tammiest (the Passionfruit Fashionista)

I first learned of overnight oats thanks to a featurette on Buzzfeed, which in turn led me to Kath of KathEats, whose colorful, beautiful photography are persuasion of the highest order.  Overnight oats are easy peasy, as long as you can remember to spend about 5-10 minutes the night before assembling all the ingredients.  The basic ratio is 1/3 cup rolled oats to 1/3 cup Greek yogurt and 1/3 cup skim milk, plus whatever toppings and mixings (non-crunchy) your heart desires, covered with plastic wrap and refrigerated until morning.  The milk can be substituted out for almond milk or coconut milk, of course, and the yogurt can be swapped out entirely (though it's recommended for thickening purposes), but the whole point is that the oats need to soak overnight.  It's actually better for digestion and nutrition, generally, for oats to be soaked (or "cultured," which is the more appropriate term).

And boy, is it delicious-- a second something worth waking up to every morning.

Ingredients
1/3 cup rolled oats
1/3 cup Chobani vanilla chocolate chip yogurt
1/3 cup skim milk (or almond milk)
1/2 banana, thinly sliced
5 strawberries, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons almond tea powder (or almond butter)
Pinch of salt

Directions
1.  Mix/layer all ingredients in a medium-sized bowl or mason jar, then cover with plastic wrap and put into the refrigerator overnight.

2.  In the morning, take out of the refrigerator and eat directly or pop into the microwave for thirty seconds on 50% power to take the chill out of the oats.