This cherry almond baked steel cut oats is a great breakfast to prepare ahead of time and have ready for the whole week.

You ever have one of those weeks coming up where come 3pm on Sunday this nagging sense of dread just starts to build up knowing Monday is inching that much closer?

That would be this week for me.

And it’s stupid too because the reason for it all is a long weekend vacation (for my 30th birthday on Saturday which, now that I think about it might actually be adding to the whole dread thing) that I know will be fun.

But all the preparation leading up to Friday morning just makes me completely want to stab my eyeballs out over the next 96 hours.

There’s to-do lists in my head, to-do lists written down on paper, to-do lists on my phone and probably about 20 things that haven’t even made it onto one of those lists yet.

And none of it is stuff that I can easily ask Ulysses to help out with because he’ll just look at me like I have 5 heads when I explain that yes, cleaning the house is a necessity before we leave because otherwise I’ll be dreading a dirty house the entire 7 hour car trip home next Monday and that won’t be fun for either of us.

This is a glimpse into my psyche…it can get a little crazy up in here.

So, instead of having to waste precious brain power on what to eat for breakfast for the next few days, I took care of that with these baked steel cut oats.

It’s got the flavors of this breakfast bake, but with the awesome chewy texture of steel cut oats.

The cherries definitely funk up the color but don’t be scared, they do wonders for the taste.

This is one of those things where if you invest a little bit of time on Sunday preparing (most of which is inactive), it’ll more than pay off for the rest of the week.

I love oatmeal bakes for that exact reason, they’re the perfect breakfast meal prep!

Try this baked turmeric oatmeal or this baked apple oatmeal for other variations.

Or, better yet, chocolate baked oats which are basically cake in breakfast form!

Then you can spend what time you would’ve been thinking about breakfast (which, if you’re like me is an embarrassingly long amount) figuring out what day and time you can fit in a manicure with the least chance of it being ruined before the trip even starts (highly unlikely).