I’m sick of talking about work.

I have discovered the secret to perfect oatmeal…at least the way I make it. Back before Atkins, I became the designated oatmealler of the household. I discovered (quite by accident) the perfect recipe…at least for how I like it, which is the “real thing” (not minute) cooked in the wave of micros, and with milk, not water. I made it pretty much every day for like, months.

Then, we went back on Atkins for a change (it didn’t work, ‘cuz I just couldn’t stick to it this time. Don’t know why, but I’m mad at myself for that. . . . but I digress.) So, before Christmas, we decided to try CJ’s modified pyramid…which meant we could do oatmeal again.

And suddenly…the magic was gone! Oooo-Noooo! No matter what I did, it boiled over. Worse, the oats just were…shall we say, aldente.

I have these perfect little individual-sized, lidded pyrex bowls in which I perform this arcane ritual.  I put a half-cup of oats, a bit of salt and a lot of splenda (and in my case a lot of cinnamon) then add enough milk to cover plus a tablespoon or so. Then, I put the bowls in the wave of micros for three minutes, stir, another minute, stir, another minute, stir, and a final minute. Perfect!

Except, it wasn’t. 30 seconds of cooking and it was boiling over. I thought at first maybe the oats were old, but they weren’t that old…only a few months. Then, I realized,we’d gotten whole milk. Maybe that was the problem. We’d always used 2% before. So…we got 2%.  Still happened. But I thought the milk looked awfully thin for 2%…It wasn’t. It was non-fat masquerading as 2%. (It had a blue lid, which in the kind we’d gotten before meant 2%) So…we got 2% and Voila! Perfection. No boilover and the oats just sucked that stuff right in.

Ain’t chemistry fun!