An Ode to Oatmeal

Oatmeal, oatmeal, steaming bowl,
Fill me up and off I'll go.
Steamy, creamy, toothsome, sweet,
You are a morning's special treat.

Cool Guy has requested oatmeal for two days running, so today's the day.  I've been under the weather for three days now, and with my achy joints and scratchy throat, a bowl of oatmeal sounds pretty good to me, too.

I've never been that fond of oatmeal.  Burt, another oatmeal lover, requested very early in the marriage that I only buy old-fashioned oats, so I don't have anything at all to say about instant or quick.  But even old-fashioned are quick.  Once the water boils, it takes about 5 minutes with only an occassional stirring.

Last month, I bought some steel-cut, or Irish, oats and tried those out.  They take quite a bit longer to cook, about 25 minutes, following the directions on the package.  But for the first time, I really enjoyed my bowl.  They were indeed "Steamy, creamy, toothsome."  Burt still prefers the regular old-fashioned, but we can work around that.  Sometimes one way, sometimes another.

One thing about being a parent is that regardless how you feel, you still have mouths to feed, children to get ready for school, little souls to minister to.  And the way I look at it, my throat is going to hurt whether I'm lying in bed or stirring oatmeal, so we may as well get something good in our bellies (with minimal effort), and rest later in the morning.

Today's bowl of oats was the steel-cut, topped with my special oatmeal topping, and served with some fried ham slices and mandarin oranges. I wanted to try my friend Jessi's idea of serving it with Nutella and banana slices, but we're all out of Nutella.  Next time, next time.  I'm sure another bowl is on the near horizon.

Steel Cut Oats
This makes 3 generous servings or 4 measly servings

1. Bring 3 cups of water to a boil in a saucepan.

2. Add 1 cup of steel-cut oats, and turn the heat to medium.  Set the timer for 20 minutes, and give a stir every now and then.

3. During the first 10 minutes, you'll have time to cook your breakfast meat, pour juice, set the table, and set out the oatmeal toppings.

4. After about 10 minutes, you're going to need to be with the oatmeal.  Turn the heat down further, and stir pretty regularly, to keep it from sticking to the pan.

5. After the 20 minutes, turn off the heat, and let the oatmeal sit for a minute or two.

6. Pour into bowls, top with your toppings and cream or milk.  All we had in the house was 2% milk, and it was fine.

If you had a "measly serving," (1/4 of the oatmeal), you will have consumed, not counting the toppings,
170 calories
3 grams of fat (that surprised me)
5 grams of fiber
7 grams of protein

That should get you through the morning.

You Say Tomato, I Say To-mah-to

No, I didn't serve tomatoes this morning.  Or potato po-tah-tos.  We had hard boiled eggs, one of my favorite breakfasts.

What I want to talk about is how different things are done in different families, and hard boiled eggs are a case in point.

The way I grew up, we peeled them, sat at the table with salt and pepper shakers, sprinkled those on, and munched away, using more salt and pepper as needed.  De-lightful.

Burt's family proceeds entirely differently: They put the eggs on a plate, roughly chop them, and then put pats of butter, plus some salt and pepper, and eat them with a fork.  De-licious.

I think one of the most interesting things in life is finding different ways of doing every-day, ordinary things.  De-lovely.

Are there other ways to eat hard boiled eggs? 

Both methods are equally good, but my way has the advantage of allowing a little flexibility for cooking and serving.  Burt's way requires the eggs to be quite hot, as in right off the stove, to have enough heat for the butter to melt.  I eat my plain hard boiled eggs hot, room temp, or cold.  It's all good to me.  And since I have a rotten, miserable cold right now and plan on crawling back into bed the moment I start feeling bad again, I think I'll go with the flexibility of the plain eggs today.

(Just a note: neither boy has yet taken to hard boiled eggs, but both like eggs in general now.  I'm suspecting that they just haven't had enough during all those cold cereal years, so I continue to make them once a month or so, serve the no-thank-you bite, plan on using the rejected eggs for tuna salad, and get on with things.  Mom-sick days are fine ones for the boys to pour their own cereal.)

This morning's eggs were served with whole wheat English muffins with honey, and a mandarin orange.

Fried Ham, Fried Ham

We had a ham for dinner on Sunday, so this week's breakfasts will include ham for the most part.  Yesterday, Encyclopedia requested fried eggs for today.  Usually, I cook some bacon to go with the eggs, but fried ham works pretty well, too.

1. I cut fairly thick slices of ham and put them on the skillet until they got a little brown on both sides.

2.  There wasn't any grease at all to speak of after frying the ham, so I put just a little bacon grease in the skillet.  I was using a non-stick skillet, so very little grease was needed.

3. I turned the heat down.  I have fried a lot of eggs badly in the past and have finally figured out that they are much better when cooked on low heat.

4. After cracking the egg in the skillet, I went ahead and broke the yolk, as we all wanted "fried hard" this morning.

5. The tricky part is figuring out when to flip the egg over.  Too soon, and you have a scrambled mess.  Too late, and you overcook one side.  There is a learning curve involved, but it's only eggs, not life-and-death.

And in very short order, you have the makings of a great breakfast: fried ham and eggs, toast with jelly, and a little mandarin orange.  I toasted the bread and peeled the oranged while waiting on the ham.  And now, I have the satisfaction of knowing that despite my cold, and despite that I'm spending the rest of the day in bed, accomplishing nothing, I have managed to send the boys to school well-nourished and able to make it until lunchtime.

Picky, Picky

It is time to address picky eaters.  We all have them; we may even be one ourselves.

I'm not a child expert unless you count my experience of raising two very different boys being an expert, and I'm not a nutritionist, psychologist, or pediatrician.  Only "the mom in the kitchen," my version of Man on the Street.

Here, then, are some random thoughts.  Take them as the offerings they are.

• Most kids go through picky phases.  And like all phases, they wax and wane.  It's not worth getting too worried about.
• I am not a short-order cook.  I make one breakfast per day, with the alternative of plain Cheerios, if the breakfast I make is not to one's  liking.
• For any dish that is either new or questionable, I dish out one No-Thank-You bite.  This tip came from Meal Makeover Moms.  And I literally put one small bite, not spoonful on the boys' plates.  They take the bite and either tell me "no thank you," or they decide they like it and get some more.  It takes the pressure off everyone and greatly reduces strife at the breakfast table.
• Alternative junk in the house is minimized. Not eliminated, as we are human and enjoy a cookie now and then.
• To combat pickiness at dinner, we have a set window for snacks.  The cutoff is 2 1/2 hours before dinner.  If someone is starving before dinner, I can usually set out some carrot sticks ahead of time.
• Politeness is encouraged.  Cool Guy's mantra is "Thank you for making this, mom, but it's not my favorite."  I can live with that.
• If you serve a variety of items at breakfast, you won't have "all your eggs in one basket."  (Pardon the pun.)  So when I made the veggie egg scramble with Green Stuff in it, I also served bacon and oranges plus juice.  Encyclopedia had his one bite of eggs, said no thank you, and was satisfied with the bacon and orange.  We can all live with that.  This is especially important with serving something new or some historically disliked item.
• Kids' tastes change.  Actually, so do adults.  I won't even go into my 30-year refusal to eat corn.  What a fool I was.  Encyclopedia refused eggs for 10 years and last night asked for them for breakfast today.  Persevere.
• Excitement is contagious.  I get excited when oranges are in season.  Ditto for apples, peaches, blueberries.  I talk about it, share my enthusiasm.  And the boys also get excited.  Right now, we are each consuming about 2 oranges per day, by request.  And I KNOW they got that from me.

And one final word of advice to stiffen the spine: We are the parents, and one job of ours is to ensure that our family is fed well, with food to thrive on.  That is our calling and one of our many responsibilities.  Knowing that, it is worth the effort it takes to present food that is healthy, tasty, "real."  Food should not be a place for power struggles, and there is no accounting for tastes.  Each should be able to decide what and how much to eat, but as long as the options are consistent, like my plain Cheerios option, variety available, and the cook emotionally detached (really, it's not personal), breakfast can be joyful time.

Do you have any tips for dealing with picky eaters?  Please let me know!

Two Magic Words

When I was growing up, breakfast at our house was not very good, and it was so not very good that this has always stuck in my mind at how bad (OK, yes it was bad) our breakfasts were.  Even as a kid, I was aware that we had crummy breakfasts.  Mainly we had sugared-up box cold cereal, and I hate cold cereal.  Alway have.  There is not one brand, not one variety that I like.

Also, I was a ridiculously picky eater as a kid, and this was back in the day when picky eaters were NOT catered to.

I'm not saying I was scarred for life because of bad breakfasts, or that my parents were rotten, not at all.  My parents just did what lots and lots of other parents do: gulp down some coffee, pour some cereal for the kids, and scurry out the door.  (And by the way, I have to credit my dad especially with instilling a love of the amazing world of cuisine out there.  We had Japanese tempura, homemade ravioli, Korean short ribs, and all manner of "exotic" fare when I was growing up in small-town Oklahoma in the 1970's.)

But, also, I can remember day after day of staring at, stirring, choking down, bowls of unappetizing, soggy, unnaturally colored cereal.

And then, occassionally, my mom would wake me with two magic words: "French toast," and I would shoot out of bed, be at the table in a jiffy, and dance my way through the morning.

It would be like going from black and white to technicolor, that's the impact French toast had on me.  It was definitely a rock star breakfast, and it still has that magic for me.

French Toast (per serving)
2 slices of bread - homemade is best, but any kind will do
1 or 2 eggs, beaten with a little milk in a pie plate - number of eggs depending on number of servings
sprinkle of cinnamon

If you have a griddle, this is a perfect way to use it.  If not, a skillet will do just fine.

1.  Beat the eggs with a little milk, and sprinkle with a little cinnamon.  Sometimes, I get fancy and add a little orange peel chopped up very finely to the egg mixture.

2. Soak the bread in the egg.  If it's squishy boughten bread, this will only take a few seconds.  If it's homemade or harder, stale bread, this will take a little longer.  You want the egg to permeate the bread, but not to the point of disintegrating it.

3. Rub some butter over your griddle after you have heated it up.  Place the soaked bread on the griddle and cook it until it's done, just like you'd do for a grilled cheese sandwich.

4. Since it's cooked on butter, I eschew adding more to the French toast at the table, but we always do have maple syrup to pour over.

Today's breakfast was accompained by some ham slices grilled along with the toast, and of course, oranges.  The entire operation took 10 minutes, and it is, without a doubt, Encyclopedia's favorite breakfast.  He takes after his mom that way.

A New Year Resolution Breakfast

I love New Year's Day.  Burt feels nothing but disdain for, what he calls, a "made up holiday."  His view is that it is silly to celebrate the turning of a calendar page and that the only good thing about New Year's is the football.  My view, the right one, is that here is the chance for a clean sweep.  Out with the old, clean out the cobwebs, clear out the clutter (literally and figuratively), evaluate your life, make some resolutions!  Who says resolutions need be negative or punitive?  Maybe New Years is the holiday for the Eternal Optimist.

Resolutions for this year include following the advice of the Meal Makeover Moms and eating 2 cups of fruit per day and 2.5 cups of vegetables.  This is such an easier way for me to translate into my daily life as compared to "portions" or "exchanges" or "servings."  I know what 2 cups looks like.

The fruit part is easy.  I get that done during breakfast, but the vegetables are going to be a lot harder to do consistently.  And it probably means that I should, when I can, include veggies in every meal.

New Year's Day dawned, and I set out to make scrambled eggs and bacon.  After the bacon cooked, I checked the fridge for any leftover veggies to add to the eggs.  I found the scooped-out potato from the day before's baked potato skins, and I found some garlicky sauteed spinach from the night before.  Here's what I did.

1. After the bacon was done, I poured most of the grease in the grease bowl, leaving just a film.  Don't want to undermine the veggie effort too much.

2. I added the potatoes and gently stirred them around.  I wanted them to warm up and get a little crust.

3. I then added the spinach to take the chill off.  They were already pretty well-cooked.

4. While the veggies were cooking I mixed together 5 eggs (one egg per person plus one) and added a little milk.

5. I added the eggs to the skillet, and very gently stirred it all on low heat.

Burt and I thought it was one of the most delicious renderings of scrambled eggs we had ever tasted.  It was probably a little more grown-up than the boys wanted, but after the sample bite, Cool Guy had  a regular helping.  Encyclopedia only had the sample bite and then contented himself with bacon and an orange.  Which is fine.

Would I make it again?  Most definitely.  Would I have potato centers and spinach sitting in the fridge?  Probably never again at the same time.  But, and this is the point, I'll have something.  And off the top of my head, I can't think of any veggies that I would not put in scrambled eggs.  OK, maybe not eggplant, but I don't like eggplant.  And not lettuce, either.  But you get my point.  Save your veggies from the night before, warm them up, add eggs, and reap the benefits of delicious food and lots of good nutrition.

The time involved with this creation clocked in under 10 minutes.  I'm loving it.

I Never Would Have Dreamed Up This One

Sometimes, it just takes the outlandishness in a child to spark some creativity.  Last night, as I was baking potatoes for the  next day's breakfast, Cool Guy asked, as usual, if we could have oatmeal for breakfast.  (I think I mentioned that he's on an oatmeal jag right now and asks for oatmeal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  He gets it about 50 % of the time for breakfast and lunch.)  Anyway......

Cool Guy: "Mom, can we have oatmeal for breakfast tomorrow?"

Me: "No, I'm baking potatoes right now for fried potatoes in the morning."

CG: "How about potato skins?" 

Well, how about potato skins?  Never had em for breakfast, never heard of em for breakfast, but so what?  They have potatoes, bacon, cheese, and they make boys happy.

Except I've never made them before.  I woke fairly early and already had the potatoes baked.  "This will be easy," I thought, anticipating extra time to do a little early morning web surfing.  One hour later, I'm just about ready to get the skins in the oven for cheese melting and muttering that this is the LAST TIME I'll ever make potato skins.

Until Cool Guy takes his first bite.  He is almost doing cartwheels, he likes it so much.  I am, too.  Who knew they could be this good?

Will I make them again?  Definitely.  Will I do it on a regular basis?  Probably not.  Way too time-consuming for daily fare, but for a weekend, holiday, birthday, snow day, how about potato skins?

(Note: I used the recipe from The Pioneer Woman Cooks.  I didn't have any green onions on hand, which I'm sure was fine with the boys, and I had baked the potatoes the night before.  I baked one potato per person, plus one, making 5, and I cooked only three strips of bacon, which was plenty.  A tiny dollop of sour cream (reduced fat) was perfect.)