Hearty Oatmeal and Herbert Hoover

How to make your oatmeal rich and creamy with sanctimony

Morning! It’s frigid here. With the wind chill, it’s in the single digits, which is why you find me eating oatmeal this morning for breakfast.

Why I need hearty, warming oatmeal if I’m not going out to fell trees or drive the ice roads in Alaska, I dunno. But it does set a gal up for a cozy day at her desk.

Please don’t send me hate mail for lazily using packets of instant oatmeal. Wouldn’t you rather I had a healthy breakfast? And Trader Joe’s (not a paid promotion) mix of oats, quinoa, amaranth and flax seeds allows me to start my day feeling sanctimonious, so when I head to the kitchen later in the afternoon to work on a chocolate cake recipe, I can work knowing I had a nutritious start to the day.

(We all know chocolate is very nutritious for body and soul.)

Here is my instant oatmeal trick for the day: In order to make it taste creamy without adding milk or cream, stir the oats and hot water vigorously for about a minute. It helps the starch release from the grain and the result is a smooth, lush oatmeal.

I typically add fruit, some cinnamon and maple syrup. What do you top yours with? Do tell.

Speaking of which, I am on a quest to develop a great maple tea bread. Too many I come across are too bland, with the maple flavor more of an idea than a reality.

In other news, I am doing research on my book about the history of the American kitchen, which gives me permission to read through months and months of Ladies Home Journals from the early 1900s. The magazine is so different from the Journal you may remember. The magazine articles reflect the Progressive era, so along with the expected homemaking tips and ideas for Christmas gifts you could sew yourself, it is very vocal about the important role women play in society. It also attracted well-known authors, including Dorothy Parker, which was a treat to come across in an issue from 1918. (On the flip side of her article, was one penned by Herbert Hoover on the important job women had in saving food and feeding their family properly. [He had come out of WWI known as “The Great Humanitarian,” for his skill in getting food to the starving civilians of Europe.])

Ladies Home Journal promised to answer reader’s questions and touted editors for every subject.

In other news, the semester starts up again next week where I teach, and I must say I am a wary of heading into a classroom where kids are usually only wearing cloth masks, and often droopy ones at that. I saw in the news today that the CDC is pondering whether to suggest KN94 and N95 masks are the only decent barrier against the Omicron variant. Just say it already. And make masks available to everyone.

And while I can’t promise to answer any of your questions as reliably as the ladies mentioned above, try me on food and recipes! And consider E. Jean Carroll for all your sex hygiene questions!