Oat MEAL.

Way back in the bad old graduate school days, my neighbor was a psych grad student and I was dirt poor, I mean poorer than I've been since I was babysitting for a living. I'd lost a job, my boyfriend at the time lived a bazillion miles away, my dissertation director was abusive, I was in the midst of both a divorce and a nasty sexual harassment debacle, and maybe not coincidentally, I wasn't writing. Which meant I wasn't finishing my dissertation, and that was bad, bad, bad. I cried. A lot.

I needed work, I thought. If I could do something, I would be okay. My neighbor, probably a do-gooder who pitied me, but at that point I didn't care, told me she needed someone to read her psych texts into a tape recorder so that she could listen to them as she drove, and she would pay me $10 or something a tape. They were the most boring books I ever read. At one point, she told me to stop yawning since it was dangerous: when I yawned, she did, and that made her sleepy, and after all -- she was driving, so could I PLEASE stop yawning. Yeah, I didn't.

[Right now I'm yawning. Typing the word makes me yawn. Saying it makes me yawn. What IS that?] [Holy crap. Watch the chimps yawn. Mirror neurons? Wow.]

But this was several weeks after she found me crying in the back yard of the trashy little house I rented (and loved) [search Woodrow St, Athens, GA at this site]. She told me I was depressed, and asked why I didn't come over and have some oatmeal and we could talk.

Her name was Amy, she was very concerned in a nice maternal way, and I hated oatmeal. I said, yes, (snork, sniffle), expecting at least to find comfort, if not good food.

This is Amy's oatmeal, minus the mashed banana, only because my bananas weren't ripe. And I ate probably three bowls of it that morning. Afterwards, I went home and threw away my instant oatmeal packets -- never even thought twice again about buying those shitty little envelopes of pre-made oat-refuse my mother'd pawned off as oatmeal. What Amy made, and that crap, are not even kin. I'm telling you what.

What you'll need:

Oatmeal -- I've gotten snobby and buy steel-cut oats (they have their own website!), but plain Quaker regular-cook oats will do

water

dried fruit (here, raisins and dates)

nuts

applesauce or finely diced apples

a little butter and sugar (maple syrup is also good)

Milk or cream if you like to eat your oatmeal that way, though I don't.

Oats cook at a 3:1 ratio: three parts water to one part oats. For three people, if you're having toast, 3 c water, 1 c oats. If you're feeding Chuck (search Bowie on this website), this feeds two people, with toast. One if he's really hungry.

If you're doing just these servings, you'll need about a 1/3 c nuts, 1/2 c dried fruit, 1/4 c applesauce or one small apple, about a TBSP butter and a tsp of sugar.

Boil the water with a little salt, maybe a tsp or so. Add oats (and if you are using diced apple, the apple), stir once, return to boil, turn heat to low, cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the water is absorbed.

Meantime, break up the pieces of nut into bite-sized bits with your hands. In a small frying pan, melt a little butter and toast the nuts over medium heat. When they smell like toasted nuts (intensely nut-smelling) and start to turn deeper brown, sprinkle with about a tsp of brown or white sugar and take off the heat.

When the oats have absorbed all the water, add the nuts, dried fruit, and applesauce. If you're using just diced apple, you may want to add about 1/2 tsp cinnamon and a little sugar. Stir. Taste. Adjust salt (for more intense taste); sugar (for more sweetness); or butter (for more richness).

Eat. Think of Amy who was kind to me when I needed it. Thank you, Amy.

There you go.