The unutterable tragedy of instant oatmeal

"What are those?" my coworker exclaimed, looking up from rifling through the Halloween candy someone had brought in and noticing my butter tub.

"Oatmeal," I started to say.

"Oh, walnuts," he said, sounding relieved. "Did you put those in there yourself? Or did it come with them?"

This is the second time someone at work has commented on the fanciness of my oatmeal, which I have every weekday morning (unless I made muffins or something the Sunday before). It's not that hard: two-thirds of a cup of Quaker old-fashioned oats, a spoonful of brown sugar, a handful of Craisins, and another handful of walnuts or almonds. Obviously, today was a walnut day.

I used to bring in the packets of instant oatmeal. But I got tired of the flavors and the cost, and read that you could make your own--then read that putting boiling water on regular rolled oats works just fine. Now I put hot water from the coffeemaker spigot in and microwave it for forty seconds, and it's almost like cooking it on the stove, which is how I like oatmeal best (but never get anymore because eating oatmeal five days a week is enough so I never make it at home).

Anyway, I understand why people ask me where I bought my fancy oatmeal. But it's sad just the same.

Cooking up something good

Blechh. I have eaten too much dinner. It's good dinner--I actually cooked, which isn't happening as much lately as it ought--but there were too many carrots and, um, mint M&Ms while I was waiting. I had my first appointment with the new doctor (midwives actually) today and if their scale is calibrated the same as the old one, I really need to knock off the M&Ms (the carrots are probably fine).

I was supposed to go clothes shopping today while Eric's up in Ann Arbor at gaming night, but I didn't feel like going anywhere--and there was nothing quick to grab for dinner, anyway, hence the cooking. Instead I'm reading. I also need to write and to quilt. I was contemplating switching out Here, Fishy Fishy for the next quilt for my cousin (Balloon Flight, I think) because her due date is nearing and HFF was all finished, but now I've got a reasonably firm date to see the recipient of HFF so I've got to have both quilts finished within ten days anyway, so it doesn't really make sense to switch. So there must be quilting tonight, because I'm going to be gone next week on a business trip which will make getting to my sewing machine difficult.

I'm taking part in a writing workshop at Penguicon the first weekend in May, and as part of it I'm supposed to critique the other participants' stories. I've finished two, and finding that a thorough critique really does take a lot of time and concentration. I'm enjoying it, though. I also find it helps me want to write more myself. I'm not sure whether part of it is to reassure myself that I write better than they do; I peeked at the third story and I think it's going to be much better than these two, so we'll see how I feel when I'm through that one. Either way, I may want to give some thought to joining a writer's group, because I think just doing the critiques is helping me--that's why I applied to be part of the workshop in the first place.

Reading this post will increase your risk of expatiation by 43%.

This study says that in older women, those who ate more of current dietary guidelines (fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat animal products) had a 30% less death rate from all causes, but especially cancer and cardiovascular disease.

This article describes two studies looking at the relationship between eating habits and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (cancer of white blood cells). One showed that people who ate most vegetables had a 42% lower risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma; the other showed a 51% lower risk. [I'm not sure exactly what they were looking at here--the study design sounds dubious the way the article describes it--but that's not relevant to my point.]

This article describes a study finding that people who increased consumption of fruits and vegetables by approximately two servings per day reduced their risk of head and neck cancer by 6%.

(Incidentally, the Book of Daniel apparently agrees with these studies, according to Wikipedia. I'll have to pull out my Bible and see if I can find this.)

I think the way they provide this information is interesting, and not very effective. "Vegetables/fruits/whole grains lower your risk of X, Y, and Z." It's a perfectly legitimate and honest way to present their findings. But it has no real impact to me, viscerally or psychologically. Why? I think it's because (a) I don't know what my base risks of X, Y, and Z are, and (b) my assumption is that my risk is pretty low ("it can't happen to me" fallacy). So why do I need to worry about lowering my risk any further? Can't be that important. Result: I don't really care about this information.

But what if the scientists and journalists wrote it this way? "Eating two or more servings of junk food daily increased older women's risk of death by 43%." "Replacing vegetables with junk food increases your risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma by 70%." That means more to me. They're telling me that this is something I'm (probably) doing that's endangering my health by a lot.

Admittedly, they'd have to redesign new studies to be able to say these things. But it's interesting that scientists are looking hard at what's healthy--on the assumption that we don't know--and ignoring what's unhealthy. The basic assumption that they, and we, seem to have, is that an unhealthy diet is the standard to judge all things by.

I wonder when this happened, and how it coincided with the growth of nutritional research. And I wonder what it would take to change it.

Food for thought, kind of

Slightly over two thousand words last night. I was wandering around aimlessly and asked Eric, "What should I be doing?" He said, "Writing," so I did. And I asked his mom for the Christmas riddles we wrote to apply to what would be a fun little writing project if I were selected for it. Probably not, but it won't hurt to try. (I realized recently that I have no education in writing at all, except for personal reading and perhaps the "creative writing" elective I took in seventh grade that didn't so much teach us anything as give us time to write during school.)

Two entirely different blogs I read linked this article last night: Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler. I read parts of it aloud to Eric and he was appalled. (I was feeling ever-so-slightly smug until I got to the part about switching from a Camry.) I'm going to work on Eric to eat less meat, and better meat (from the farmer's market, for example), and I think he'll be willing after hearing some of those statistics. (And we already want to get a more efficient car for our next purchase, whenever that is. Assuming I can get him off the minivan idea, if we've got kids by that point.)

Sort of relatedly, I made a quinoa-corn-black bean salad last night, in celebration of the slightly warmer temperature, and it was sooo good. Eric and I have been planning all this heavy food, lasagna and stew and potato-cheese casserole, and it's good winter fare, but it was so nice to have a break with something lighter. And right now I'm having some leftover French toast from Sunday, made from cinnamon swirl bread. I need to improve the cinnamon swirl bread, but this was definitely a good concept.

A weekend within budget.

According to the budget, we're doing okay. We have a very small amount of wiggle room, not enough to get us plane tickets to Mom and Dad's as planned, but we'll see how it goes. We went grocery shopping yesterday, first to Andersons, where we bought a bunch of produce, some stew meat and some ground beef for Eric, and some mozzarella for lasagna (we priced it at about $1.25 per person the way we make it, less if we use my own pasta sauce from the freezer). "This is going to be some seventy or eighty dollars," Eric said, but when we paid it came to $38. "For all this?" he marveled. Then we went to Kroger to get testosteroni and Gatorade bottles (he wants five bottles so that he can go a week without washing them if possible, and then will make new Gatorade from huge tubs of powder we got from Meijer to refill them with) and other processed stuff, and that came to $80. Which kind of contradicts the whole it's-cheaper-to-buy-unhealthy-food thing, but maybe I missed something.

I did winter sowing this weekend, and some baking (conclusion: sourdough is not suited for use in classic sandwich bread, at least not when made in a cold kitchen), and a little writing, but not enough. And I didn't apply to the things online that I had meant to. But we got a bunch of laundry done, and paid the credit card bill, and determined what Eric needs to do to find out if he can get unemployment. So it was a pretty good weekend as far as productivity goes. And we did a bunch of goofing off, which was a pretty good weekend as far as being a weekend goes.

We did the pizza crust extravaganza last night, and except for a less consistent schedule of rising and resting and baking than I would have liked, it went off with reasonable scientific rigor. (I'm going to post it at The Fresh Loaf tonight if I remember.) We like the honey-wheat and the herbed crusts best, so the next step is to try honey-wheat-herb crust. Incidentally, doing mini-pizzas like this (each was about seven inches across) would be a great way of doing a tapas-type meal, or for a party. Bite-size pizzas would also be good, I bet, though a bit more work (but they'd bake up really fast!). Maybe I should try that for our next party. Along with the homemade pickles and salsa and ice cream. Maybe this year we'll learn to make our own tortilla chips?

Tonight I'm yet again working on the garlic-rosemary sourdough, using less garlic this time. Next week there will be no bread baking at all (we're going to ConFusion and there will be no pizza because I need time to recover from last night), so I better get my licks in now.

I got the first of my seed orders last night, from Seeds of Change. I was quite pleased--and the free seed packet was nice, of course. And then I was looking at Baker Creek and finding, among other things, seeds for a two-foot pomegranate tree. It has been very, very hard not to order those seeds. But I've got enough to deal with this upcoming growing season...especially since we've got all that landscaping to do in addition to the actual garden work. Though feeling free to call on Eric to do half of that will help a lot.

I called up the tax guy and he told me what to send in to prove I didn't live here when I was working in Dayton, so that’s fine. But the other line item, not enough Toledo tax, was due to my work taking out only the tax for the city the company is located in, which is lower than Toledo's. I checked with HR just now and they won't take out the proper amount, so I'm going to have to pay Toledo tax myself for the next couple of years. Realistically speaking this is probably better for me--I get to hang on to that extra couple of hundred dollars for longer--but it annoys me nonetheless.

We're going to the Farmer's Market tomorrow. I am determined. I wanted to go all summer last year and didn't, partly because I had my own garden and partly because it's downtown where we have no other business. Now that I know they're open in the winter--and I've been told they have greens and apple cider and eggs and apparently an entire poultry house, if Eric wants fresh chicken soup--I must visit and see what's there. I'm hoping they have cheese and potatoes, too.

It's a slow day at work, with my two big concerns being a project that's been delayed and a project with mistakes that I have to help ameliorate. I didn't make the mistakes, so I don't feel too bad about that. It hasn't been too bad for my first full work week in almost a month, though.

Important bulletin

It turns out freezing cream is a bad, bad idea. We had extra from the wedding, see, so I stuck it in the freezer. I pulled it out last night for ice-cream making. When I opened the carton this evening it wouldn't come out because it had clotted into a tangled mess. It smelled fine, it was just clotted and protein-y and...yuck. I made my fastest run to Kroger ever. (Where they had boxes of satsumas! At least, they said that's what they were. The boxes were $8 each and I didn't quite believe, so I didn't get any. But I will later when they get cheaper, if they're still here. If I can get satsumas out here--?)

I made potato-cheese casserole last night for dinner. Normally this requires potatoes, cheese, broccoli or green onions or neither or both (broccoli in this case), and cream of onion soup. Last night, I started the potatoes boiling and grated the cheese and then realized that I had no cream of onion soup. So I made my own, of sorts--it was more of a gravy or a roux, but it worked quite well, and it was interesting to see the cumulation of twenty years of watching my mother cook, then assisting, then doing it myself staring up at me from the pan. The casserole tasted fine.

My dad e-mailed me a news item about Rowling declaring that Dumbledore was gay and said he was disappointed in her. I contended it might not have been a political statement, maybe that was just her backstory for him; but I'm afraid of what this means about his own views.

I'm feeling very quietly discontented with my life. Not that this is anything new; but I wonder what it'll take to stop it. Moving? I've been here two years now.

I did pumpkin-carving at the local Metropark yesterday, for the Ghosts of Providence program. I'm also going to be leading lantern tours on Friday. I've never seen the program before, so this should be fun. Afterwards I went to Andersons for produce and another wintergreen plant, and found that they have any number of potted citrus trees. I was tempted by the kumquat or the minneola--but not $60 worth.

I also stopped at a farmer's stand that I've been meaning to stop at every time I go out to the Metropark. All their summer produce is gone, of course; I wish I'd visited earlier. But they had very nice pumpkins and squashes, and lots of apples. I bought a buttercup and an ambercup squash (the latter purely because it's pretty) and I'll have to figure out what to do with them...later, though, as I accidentally nicked one of my four homegrown butternut squash later that night, so I'll be making roasted-squash-and-bean soup tonight.

I'm due to make apple butter and apple cider jelly this week as well...also stock, from the bag of vegetable leavings I've been keeping in the freezer. I wonder how much or how little of this do-it-myself business I'll retain once I have kids.

In Jennifer Housewife news, my floors are shockingly dirty. Also the laundry is going slowly because a three-inch spider has taken up residence just beside the washer, and so I'm either making Eric load and unload the washer or moving very slowly with my eyes fixed on the spider the whole time. I suppose I could ask him to get rid of it, come to think of it, and that would speed things up.

The construction company was supposed to come and fix our driveway last week. But they didn't come and didn't call, so I left a nasty (well, nasty for me) voicemail today, and not long after the owner called to say he was very sorry and they would be out tomorrow. We'll see.

So here's my week's list:

-vacuum
-mop
-make apple butter
-make apple cider jelly
-make stock (broth really, I guess)
-use butternut squash
-finish B's bear
-finish C's glove
-transplant herbs and strawberries

Why is so much of that food-related? I must also take some walks...

Dinner from the garden

I was good and did a little work in the garden--tied up the tomatoes (who knew I had so many green tomatoes down there?), weeded, picked the last of the peas. And my dinner. This is what I walked in the house with:

The basil tops came with me because I noticed the plants were trying to flower. (Time for more pesto before that happens, I think. What else can I use basil in, in big quantities?) Those peas are the last of the peas. (The box is fruit strips from Target--kind of expensive per calorie, but organic, healthy, and very good.) The two carrots I pulled to see how big they were, and the zucchini is my first of the summer. The onions came in because, well, the rest of dinner was from the garden, so they might as well be too.

I sliced the zucchini thinly and chopped the rest. (Notice my nice new bamboo cutting board? Belated wedding gift from Phoebe. I love it with a fiercely burning love.) The onions went into hot olive oil, then the zucchini, then the green onions and basil. Some salt and pepper, not too much salt because of my bad experience with the Swiss chard.

It actually made more food than this; I was hungry, and I forgot to take a picture right away. The zucchini was about six ounces, incidentally. There are two more, not quite ready, but very close. Next time I might try shredding them with potatoes and carrots and making veggie pancakes. Or breading and frying them. The Gold Rush zucchini apparently isn't as prolific as some zucchini types, but the taste is good and it's certainly showing a willingness to supply me with all the zucchini I care to eat, so I'd better be thinking about recipes.

I guess I'm doing all right

I weeded last night, listening to Steely Dan--so my neighbors told me--play at the Toledo Zoo. We're half a block away, and so when the zoo has their summer concerts we can sit outside, or open the windows, and listen. Once my fingers were blackened and most of the bindweed/wild morning glory had been pulled up, I went inside. For a time I sat on the couch, reading and eating salt and vinegar potato chips with the window open, but it was cold (last time for a while, I imagine--I appreciated it) and starting to rain, and the music was curiously sporadic, so I closed up the window--and, um, had some of the leftover ice cream from the wedding. Potato chips and ice cream. I also had a healthy dinner, honest.

Speaking of which, I've been using FitDay.com to record my meals every day, and discovering that I don't get enough calories before I leave work. That explains why I'm always so hungry when I get home, and snack too much as a result. So I'm going to try bringing more food for the mornings. I started doing this to see whether I need to concentrate on any nutrients in particular, but I’m getting an additional benefit from it, which is nice since it's a bit of a pain putting in every food I eat.

I'm working on Phoebe's baby quilt, and behind on it, but I expected that. Tonight we're finally going to start on thank-you letters--not to mention cleaning up the kitchen. We're trying to decide what to do with an "ABCs of Marriage" plaque we got from some family friends of Eric's. We're both pretty "eh" about it, but it was a nice thought from a couple who don't have a lot of money to spare. Honestly I'd just as soon use the frame for something else, but I'm waiting for Eric's decision, and Eric--as is common--either doesn't have an opinion or doesn't want to make a decision. I'm going to be one of those wives who decide everything, I can just tell.

The first ten days of married life have been fine. Mostly it doesn't feel different from before, but then in a couple of tiny ways it does--and the first time I said "my husband" to a stranger seriously weirded me out. (It was at my coworker-friend C's wedding, just a week after mine, and to which I brought two Tide pens which she happily did not need. I need to pick up my wedding dress from the cleaners today and see whether hers, which we ran dry at the wedding, saved the dress or not.) Some of the checks we received as gifts are made out to "Mr. and Mrs. [him]," which kind of worries me--Eric says the banks are pretty undestanding about this, though. And if not, well, it's not like we need the money; they're gifts, after all. Overall, life right now is pretty good.

Important Bulletin

If you put seaweed in your food, especially the sweet, crispy flakes that your aunt bought you in Korea, and then you leave your food in the fridge overnight and then take it to work the next day and add a little water and heat it up, you may find that your food has turned pink. This is--I am pretty sure--from the seaweed. Do not be alarmed.

(On the other hand, if I am found dead later today, don't eat seaweed. Ever.)