Wind’s been scouring the tops of the ridges for two days, but yesterday was in the sixties. Today it’s not, and the expression “wind chill” first enters the discussion for the season. In my household, as I’m sure in yours, this is the traditional time to obsess about the depressing oatmeal situation.
Three summers ago, Landlady spent some of my geiger counter money on a fifty-pound sack of the good stuff:
and since I don’t eat it much in the summers that lasted through two winters. But it won’t make it through a third. Today I emptied the last oatmeal bucket into a pitcher for the cabinet. Just made it, too.
That (sob) is all that’s left.
Hey, if somebody happens to be driving past a nuclear power plant, you think you could pause and arrange for a minor meltdown? That geiger counter money was kinda nice…
That’s too bad. I have a slightly different problem, but can sympathize. A few years ago I bought 100 pounds of oat “groats,” the whole oat with the outer hull removed. Those things are HARD, and so far I’ve not found a good way to use them. I can put them through my mill, but they gum up the grinding plates and it is very slow going. The milled oats are a mix of large chunks and various smaller particles. Since I use oats mostly in my bread, I need to find a way to mill them a lot finer because the chunks just don’t ever get cooked. I tried cooking some groats as one would rice, but it didn’t produce anything I’d want to eat often. Sure wish I could figure out how my Scots ancestors used the darn things. I really need a “roller” machine.
In other words, if you can get regular “oatmeal,” do so. The groats are a lot less expensive to buy, but a real challenge to use. 🙂
ML – The groats take a bit more cooking than rice. I’ve found that using three parts water to one part groats and cooking for at least an hour works. I also saw an Alton Brown/Good Eats episode in which he cooked steel cut oats in a Mr. Coffee by combining the oats,water, and salt in the pot and leaving it on the heating element over night – I would think this process would work for groats as well.
jc2k, you bet. I cook them for at least an hour and a half, but they are still very chewy. Taste ok, as long as I get them rinsed well. Lots of chaff and dust in what I bought. But what the heck… it was cheap then. I would never leave anything overnight on the burner of a coffee maker, however. Just asking for problems and a burned out machine. I have a small crock pot, and though I never considered it before, that might just be the ideal way to cook the groats. If I could figure out some way to get these “steel cut,” I’d be ahead of the game, but whole is what I’m pretty much stuck with. I can put them through the food processor once they are thoroughly cooked, and that might work fine for using them in my bread, though it is going to be hard to measure the liquid that way. I’ll have to try it. 🙂
Might be easier to put the groats out for the deer, then eat the deer. 😉
Heh 🙂