See, it all started because of oatmeal. I like it quite a bit. I think that’s kind of a mundane thing to like, but like it I do, and I make no apologies. I especially like steel-cut oats, which are cut with something steel, I’m guessing, and more pertinently, take FOREVER to make on the top of the stove and which are like sweet nectar to my soul when drenched with the proper amounts (i.e., a lot) of maple syrup and butter and cream. Mmm! Oatmeal! Love it! Say it loud and say it proud!
The only negative thing about eating delicious steel-cut oats is that they take forty-five minutes to make, and you know I’m going to spend that forty-five minutes in the morning meticulously blow-drying my hair and applying my flawless makeup, if by which you mean, “sleep as late as possible and then throw on clothes, huddle together some sort of lunch, make sure I have my U-PASS, and put on deodorant. Not neccesarily in that order.” I’m not going to be stirring and tasting and adding a bit of this and a wee smidgen of that on a chilly Wednesday. But once you’ve had steel-cut, you don’t want to go back–and heaven forbid you ever have instant again–so I was in kind of a quandary. After all, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. What’s a girl to do?
Enter Target. As always. Since I was unemployed so long I got out of the dangerous habit of going there “just to look around,” but for some reason on Sunday I was seized by the notion that I must have steel-cut oats every morning come hell or high water, and that a crock pot was the way to get the aforementioned steel-cut oats into an edible state with less arduousness than the aforementioned forty-five minutes standing over the hot stove on a cold floor, and furthermore, that Target was the place to get one. And so we went, on the way back from a little hike to Tiger Mountain, and I was remarkably good. I hardly lingered at all in Office Supplies, which I love for some unknown and unholy reason, and barley glanced at Furnishings. I was very disciplined and headed right over to Small Applicances and picked out the cheapest one ($9.99!) and booked it on home with crock-pot in hand. Ah, hot oatmeal in the morning! Mmm!
Well. No. I followed the recipe in the book…and the fact that they had a recipe for oameal, right there in the book, shows that I’m not alone in the oatmeal-loving’, here, people…and I mixed it up and plugged it in and called it a night. A wild, oatmeal-lovin’ night! Woo! And the next morning when I woke up, there it was, all yummy and delicious and ready to go in my tupperware container for work. The End!
Except that really, it was a dessicated mass stuck to the bottom that narrowly missed my calling for a chisel and mallet or something. I tasted what I could prise out of there, just because I didn’t want to waste it or anything, but that was a big mistake and I was very sad I’d attempted such a thing. So I had a Luna Bar for breakfast that morning. Most important meal of the day, you know, easily edging ahead “Christmas cookies” and “multitudinous dried cranberries,” which are some of the meals I’ve been consuming in great quantity this week. Shh, don’t tell Ross.
But when you love oatmeal, you love oatmeal, and you clearly don’t know me very well if you think that a little something like an inedible mass stuck at the bottom of the ‘pot was going to keep me down. No ma’am! The next day, I did some research, and the fine folks at a forum I frequent steered me right with a new recipe. Ah ha! I added dried cranberries and dried apricots, two of my favorite things on earth, and threw them in. Mixed it all up, plugged it all in, and that was that. This time I knew victory would be mine.
All I can say in my defense for what happened the next morning was that I tried to eat that too. So disgusting. I called Carl in the middle of the day for an unrelated reason and confessed that I’d thrown the whole thing out. It was exactly as gross as the last morning’s batch, but in the exact opposite way. Clearly, I am a genius. Clearly, there was nothing else to be done with the gross glutinous glop curdling at the bottom of my tupperware. The grossest part, if I may be permitted to reminisce for a moment, was the reconstituted dried cranberries and apricots limply doing their thing by assaulting my tastebuds. I just don’t think that dried fruit should be…wet, you know? Urk.
Now. I think I lost the receipt, so returning the pot is out. That’s okay though because you can always use it for fondue, which I have like, three or four times a week, pretty much. Or something. The real issue here is the oats! The steel cut oats! I know I have only one more chance before I give up forever, and I have no idea what to do. More water? Longer time? Less oats? What? What am I supposed to do here, friends? Are they to be regelated to weekend-only big sloppy brunch status? Am I never to experience the quiet homey rapture of dishing myself up a thing of oatmeal that I didn’t have to stir interminably? Am I going to have to switch to Egg McMuffins?