Big Answer

Nicole (and everyone else reading along),

My response on the whole soaking thing was getting a little lengthy for a comment, and I also wanted to give credit where credit is due, so I decided to make a post of it.

Soaking the oatmeal does a couple things, it breaks down something called phytic acid, present in many grains and legumes, that keeps you from absorbing the full amount of nutrients in the grains, and it softens the oatmeal and makes it MUCH faster to cook. I get my soaked oatmeal recipe from this blog (She actually has a TON of great resources, and it is through her blog that I stumbled upon some of these others on my left margin). What I love about the soaked method is that I have about 2 minutes of prep the morning before (usually I rinse out the jar I soaked the previous batch in, toss in more oats, the water, 1 T ground almonds, 2 T ground wheat, and 1 T whey, and let it sit in the cupboard till the next morning), and then maybe 10 minutes of cook time that morning. It's a very fast breakfast!

She has basic soaking methods for several types of grains and beans here. At first read it looks like a lot of extra work, but to be entirely honest, I have found that it makes things much faster the day I actually do the baking. It also forces me to plan ahead. I'm not generally great with juggling all the planning, so both the meal plans on Mondays and the soaking have really been tools I have used to help keep things organized.

Anyway, that's pretty much a nutshell view of soaking, and of the meal planning motivation :) Hope that answered your question!