The Box It Came In Would Probably Be Tastier

One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you've got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference. –Robert Fulghum

I'm a big fan of hot cereal for breakfast. {Come to think of it, I'm a big fan of cold cereal too.} Cream of Wheat? Yes please. With lumps? Even yesser. I pretty much ate that for breakfast the entire 18 months I had braces. Zoom? Love that stuff. And lately I've been on an oatmeal {for breakfast} kick {see also: Coconut Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies and Applesauce Oatmeal Muffins}. I love the texture. It's comforting. It's less than 500 calories, even with sugar in it. It tastes good. It carries me through to lunch. I like that in a breakfast food.

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Day before yesterday, I didn't have enough oatmeal left to make my usual heart healthy serving. No problem. I popped into the pantry and pulled a box of it {can it be called a box if it is a cylinder?} off the shelf only to discover that what I bought {old-fashioned oats} was not what I brought home with me {quick cooking oats}. I hate it when that happens. But, no biggie. I mixed some of the quick cooking oats with what I had left of the old-fashioned oats and got on with it. It tasted a little funny, but it wasn't too bad. I thought that maybe it didn't have enough salt in it. Yesterday, it was all quick cooking oats. I added a tiny bit of extra salt. That wasn't the problem. I'm not sure what happens when you make oats quick cooking, but it changes the taste considerably and for the worse. The cardboard box it came in would probably be tastier.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with an entire box/cylinder of quick cooking oats. I had Cream of Wheat today. Specially made with lumps. It was a little bit stale {it might very well be left over from when I had braces, 6 years ago}. But it was still better than those quick cooking oats. Is it grocery shopping day yet?