Fall Ode to Oatmeal
My apologies to beach bums and sun worshippers everywhere, but this summer I counted the days until fall, when temperatures drop and 24-hour hot flashes subside. Finally, I can venture out of air conditioning without wearing a blasted bathing suit or the equivalent thereof. Both I and the seeing world are filled with gratitude.
Given my celebration when the Fahrenheit fades, you might expect me to continue chilling out at breakfast with cold cereal and juice. But I gave up logic for Lent a long time ago and liked it so much, I made the change permanent. Instead of reinforcing the blessed coolness, I now crave something hot. I want oatmeal — thick, steaming, gooky stuff without which autumn cannot make its appearance. I want real oatmeal, the kind that foams and bubbles on the stove, not the nuked counterfeit with its weird little alien lumps. Why?
“Just because,” to quote my mother. You can blame her for oatmeal’s sacred spot in my childhood memories. Or maybe I liked the smiling Quaker on the round box and his grandfatherly TV advice: “Nothing is better for thee than me.” Current research seems to have borne this out. Scientists now report those globs and blobs of oatmeal not only lower cholesterol, but reverse the wrinkles, replace the knees, and lower the national debt.
Who would have thunk it, back when my mom was making doll chairs from the friendly Quaker’s round boxes. She slit cardboard and assembled pieces so my dolls could gather in company chairs for tea and conversation.
Despite oatmeal’s lack of flavor, my siblings and I added only milk and sugar. Nobody in the 1960s thought of doing otherwise. We regarded oatmeal the same way we viewed our mothers: they were good for us, whether we liked them or not. No one could improve them, so if we were smart, we didn’t mess with them.
During decades since, however, a whole new oatmeal mentality has evolved. Shh! Don’t tell anyone, but I no longer qualify as a purist. My descent into decadence began when my children refused to eat oatmeal unless I arranged raisins in smiley faces on each bowl, topping them with fuzzy brown sugar hair
My husband glared at his breakfast. “Rachael, you really don’t have to make a smiley face on my oatmeal.”
Some people never appreciate true culinary art.
Undaunted, I have continued my bold experimentation and regularly mix oatmeal with sliced almonds, baked apples and dried cranberries. I even sprinkle in some bran because Internet health experts promise if consumed faithfully, this combination causes a reverse of gravity. My saggy stomach and I can’t wait to be weightless.
Strangely enough, even posh restaurants still serve oatmeal with relatively few condiments or accouterments. No mysterious yellow sauces latticed on a platter-sized plate around my bowl. No bundles of green things sprouting out of my breakfast like misguided clumps of grass.
Privately, however, the oatmeal world pushes the limits. According to some blogs, oatmeal connoisseurs add honey, cocoa, even ice cream, in efforts to up the flavor levels. Not satisfied to turn breakfast into dessert, others concocted even more interesting combinations: oatmeal with pesto and oatmeal with mushrooms (but not too many, because the flavor’s too strong). A couple of vegetable lovers add pumpkin, squash or spinach. One blog writer sighs for banana curry oatmeal with carmelized onions. This oatmeal eater lives in California — why am I not surprised? One guy mixes fruit jam with his oatmeal — not an earthshaking combination, except he swears by eating it with a required side dish: bread and butter pickles.
“It’s great,” he says. “Trust me.” Right. Whatever happened to the staunch, wholesome dish that set me straight every morning as a child? How will our descendants learn to cherish the values that made this country great if they are consuming oatmeal with Quark cheese and fresh herbs?
With a diet like that, no wonder present generations waste time and energy doing things like writing about their oatmeal preferences (2,364 people — 158 pages worth — on one website). Imagine it: sitting around all morning writing about oatmeal.
They really should get a life.