One thing I like about the cooler weather is oatmeal not only sounds good, it is a great way to take off the chill.
Yesterday, I made a big helping of oatmeal with these ingredients: peach chunks, peach juice for part of the liquid, brown sugar, candied ginger root cut in thin slivers, cardamom, fresh-grated nutmeg, and oatmeal, of course! It was delicious, but as soon as I started eating it, I realized I left out the walnuts and vanilla! Today, an even colder morning than yesterday, I shall make it the way I intended.
Nom! Nom! I love my oatmeal!
I usually use dried fruit in my oatmeal. Cinnamon, allspice, mace, nutmeg, cardamom, and ginger (ground or slivered candied ginger root), pecans, walnuts, peanut butter (mixed in after oatmeal is cooked), honey, and anything I have on hand that just sounds like it might make a good bowl of oatmeal are likely to end up in it in some combination of these ingredients. Yum! Dry cereal is OK, but oatmeal is versatile AND hot. I never use milk on it. Don’t need it.
Samuel Johnson with his acerbic wit probably just needed some fiber in his diet to mellow him out, if you know what I mean. If only he had eaten his oats…!
Fortunately for me, I come from a long line of Scots, so I know the benefits of this wonderful food! Oh, and I should mention it tastes good, too, if you gussy it up with selected spices, fruits, brown sugar, and nuts! Plain oatmeal, um, barely fit for horses….
It looks very healthy but I could not digest it…
I put things together that I like. Fortunately, there isn’t anything I can’t eat, though I draw the line at stinky cheeses: If it smells like the bottom of a stable, it will taste like the bottom of a stable, too.
Sounds like a good plan to me.
Sounds delish!
I had some yesterday and some more this morning! It definitely was delicious. I probably will have it again tomorrow since I still have a few peaches left.
Of course, I might eat the peaches for lunch. If I do that, I’ll make my oatmeal with applesauce instead of peaches. That’s really good, too!
I make pancakes with applesauce and yogurt in place of milk. They are thicker than regular pancakes, but very fluffy because the yogurt reacts with the baking powder – I guess – in a nice way that keeps them from being too heavy in texture. Of course, they taste really good, too!
Mom says she never thought of the yogurt in pancakes but it sounds delicious! You sound like a good cook. Woof!
I ran out of milk one time…! I prefer them this way now. Of course, if you use flavored yogurt, you can add more fresh fruit. I like the classic blueberry -strawberry combination, but any fruit is a health bonus. I also like using applesauce because it gives the pancakes a nice texture. Once when I made pancakes, I didn’t have any milk or yogurt, so I added a second egg plus an applesauce cup. They turned out edible all right! Of course, I also like to add nuts to the batter as well.
I must say the professor prefers coco wheats.
I like the ritual of preparation since it allows me to build an appetite before I sit down for breakfast. That little extra time spent making oatmeal assures that my mind’s adjusted to the whole idea (ugh!) of food before 10 AM. Coffee isn’t breakfast, but days I don’t work up to breakfast it would be. Lucky you if coco wheels does the job!
I agree with the food before 10 AM thingy!
Thought you’d like this:
http://i1308.photobucket.com/albums/s620/SusanHarding7/Whoops_zps35944da6.jpg
Haha! Yeah! My boys hang too close to me when I fix meals for myself, and I can see this happening! I always feed them before I feed me, but that makes no difference. Cats definitely want to be in line for food!
It can be wearing on the arms, wrists and fingers though! So I swap between the PC and the laptop, chair and sofa. I got £50 for my birthday and treated myself to a super duper keyboard Logitech K750 and worth every penny. I bought a vintage Logitech Trackman Marble which are on ebay for silly prices but also cheaper in some auctions and I’ve bought two in the last year for around £40. Again worth every penny in terms of comfort which after all is important for quality of life.
I don’t like new cars, leather sofas and changing the colour of things that people so do, but I think for the sake of a few pounds it’s worth taking preventative measures against RSI of which I still get a little sometimes. The keyboard takes a few weeks getting used to but there is very little springback and little pressure needed to hit keys.
If I don’t spoil me, who will?
I have the Logitech 350, and like it a lot. I’ll have to check out the 750 since I’m unfamliar with it. I like Logitech products.
I have a Logitech mouse and webcam that I like a lot, too. I’ve had some issues with webcam drivers in past (this is the second Logitech webcam I’ve had), but a different computer, OS, and webcam than I started out with took care of the issues, whatever their source. It was an accidental resolution: I was clueless about what the issues were, and just enjoy the fact that upgrades in those three areas (as a natural progression as I knew better what I wanted in each) corrected the problem.
Anyway, enjoy your new keyboard! You made a wise choice in my mind and in my experience!
Er, sorry no comprende – too much time on the computer? Can there be too much time on the computer? I sit on there when I get up in the morning and get off there to get to bed at night – well often the next morning. It’s great! One of the most important perks of living alone, you don’t have to do the cooking and washing up when you don’t feel like it and you can stay on the PC as long as you like! Who said computers were bad for you? I guess it depends what you use them for.
Well it’s certainly not difficult. The system is excellent and even more so with Family Tree Maker, the software that goes with it. It finds the matches up there more or less automatically, but then you will know that if you have used it. The only thing I would say is never go by someone else’s tree as some people seem to like making things up as they go along. Once you have the information from the censuses on there, then put the information from people’s trees and it will be easy to see what is right and what is wrong. It helps that I have many Mormon (second or third) cousins as they love genealogy and they’ve already done some work on various parts of the tree. I found it was Mormons who actually set up and run ancestry.com.
It really gets on my nerves that people seem to have so little respect for them. I think it’s because they are an easy target. Go insult a few policemen, or a few moslems, you cowards! Well they may not be perfect, but who is? Polygamy was only temporary and it was outlawed in 1890. I know they like weird names and I have a few of those on my tree. I know it’s a cult and the leadership are corrupt (I get the impression very Big Brotherish out there) but there are many ordinary people too and many sincere Christians. Apparently the CIA and FBI like to hire Mormons as generally speaking they are basically honest and not too devious and treacherous.
Some of my Mormon cousins were pioneers – that is before the railroad in 1880 – and I have some wonderful photographs of them which look like stills out of a western. Some were even kidnapped and massacred by Indians, and I’ve read the stories of what they went through. Many went through terrible trials. They arrived in Utah after horrendous journeys where many died of sickness, murdered by Indians and so on, many had to abandon possessions on the way. They were expecting a wonderful new world and instead found just a sea of mud and nothing much else.
Tracing their history back and some of the – even aristocratic – families they married into has been very interesting. Even there is one man on my tree, William Walton, from Yorkshire who married three sisters and had about 30 chlidren. I have many photos and letters and so on and he was by all accounts a conscientious and loving man and a wonderful father. It is evident that all those children loved him very much and turned out to be fine young men, mostly monogamously married.
On my tree I do have two pictures of men in those striped prison bodysuits with longjohns who were put in prison for polygamy. I shouldn’t snigger but that must have been pretty humiliating and they don’t look too happy. There are some of those Sons of the American Revolution thangys, and some Civil War Generals that look like they stepped out of a Western. One of my second cousins, Lucy Bateman married a nephew of John Moses Browning.
I’ve always wanted to visit Utah and I spoke to a couple today who’ve been there and although they originally didn’t want to go, they were on a tour of the States and their companions wanted to go to SLC and they had a wonderful time and were really pleased they went. They said it’s so clean and they went to a restaurant the like of which they hadn’t seen (they couldn’t remember offhand but I will get the name from them). They visited some places including a free concert and thought it was all marvellous. People were pleasant and welcoming and no one tried to evangelise them.
Anyway I’m looking forward to a holiday there perhaps in two or three years.
I have some LDS family members, too, who actually visited Scotland and located lots of information that pertains to one of my maternal grandmother’s maternal side. As long as LDS members don’t try to proselytize me, I find them just fine as people. Though I don’t accept their church, I do think their lifestyle (family centered) is commendable.
I’ve been to Utah a couple times, and it is very neat! Driving on I-80, you enter Utah overlooking a beautiful valley. I wasn’t too keen on the Bonneville Salt Flats part of the drive through the state (other than the interest of land speed records made there!) because it is a long, straight drive through desert, but you end up at Lake Tahoe, the Donner Pass into California, which definitely is a historical and beautiful (if hectic) drive.
I tend to spend most of the day on the computer, too, for the same reason: I live alone with my two Persian cats, and housekeeping isn’t as much of a priority as it could be. Ha!
That sounds yummy. I’m not that good a cook so I won’t attempt it. I do enjoy just plain porridge with salt and sugar, or perhaps some raisins, currants and sultanas. I’ve never had the gift of being able to put a bit of this and a bit of that and it turns out right. Though before I got ill, I used to love using the bread machine and made pannetone and foccaccia with ease with organic ingredients, which would be far too expensive to buy in the shops, like spelt bread. It’s not a good idea if you want to lose weight, but if one is strong on the self-discipline – sometimes I am! – it can always be sliced and put in the freezer. With home baking of course it’s also possible to cut down on the fattening ingredients like milk, eggs and butter.
I recently made some coconut ice which is easy as there’s no cooking, just coconut, condensed milk and icing sugar. Yummy, but probably fattening and not too healthy so really only a once a year treat for me. Coconut icecream is next on the list!
I too have a little Scottish ancestry. Have you looked at your family history on ancestry.com? I did for the first time this year (I’m 58) and it’s been a totally amazing journey. Even though most of my family evidently didn’t like photographs, I have found some photographs of my family from Victorian times, even two great grandmothers, and my third great uncle (including his five horse drawn carriage funeral in 1923) and his family. I have or had (many now deceased but of course their descendants) many American second and third cousins, even some in Nebraska (Wakefield), names of Ekeroth (from Sweden) and I think Thompson. I have thousands of distant relatives in Canada, Australia, and here I am all on my ownsome? Er, how did that happen? I do know how it happened, but it seems rather odd in the experience of it. At least though that gives me time to do what I want to do – just wish there were more hours in the day to get it all done as the days seem to rush by.
Anyway I am working day and night on the tree and when it’s ready I will be sending invites to some of the relatives I’ve found. Highly recommended. You can get a 14 day trial for free and if you cancel, the tree still stays there and is accessible. On the 13th day, you could with a couple of clicks download it into a transportable file called a Gedcom (sorry if you already know all this) which can be uploaded to other (some free) sites. I have found it to be an altogether wonderful experience and have just begun a blog about what I’ve found.
You’d have no problem making oatmeal the way I do. I basically am an experimenter. I know what I like, so just go for it! You have the dried fruit part down. Just add a little cinnamon, a splash of vanilla, and a few chopped nuts of your choice next time, and you have an upgrade on regulation oatmeal!
Wakefield is about 583 km [362 miles] away from where I live, basically on the far east end of Nebraska, where I live in the far west end in the Panhandle. I have done a little looking for family. I found a photo of my paternal great grandmother, a shocking discovery because my paternal grandmother looked pretty much like her mother! I almost cried! It took my breath away because there is not much we know about my Dad’s family beyond his parents. I have some photos of my maternal side of the family, but all of the family contacts of my grandmother’s generation in Scotland died out, and no one on either side tried to locate and re-establish the contact. My mother’s parents were both from the Glasgow area (Glasgow proper- grandfather/ East Kilbride, which was a separate village when my grandmother lived there, though it appears to be more a suburb of Glasgow now.
Yes, I’ve used ancestry.com for this search and did a DNA test to locate genetically similar people. A guy in Australia contacted me about the results since they suggest we are irreparably stick together as cousins at some level.
The local museum has a genealogy section with help from people who know what they’re doing. I intend to get around to making use of that service as soon as I can arrange some time: I’m at the end of my capabilities to use the tools available. I know it’s mostly a matter of just gaining some proficiency in use of those tools, and I’m on my way.
(Some of my grandfather’s family came from Avoch, in the far north.)
I have bread machine, too, and rarely use it for the same reason you do: It tastes too good, and I’d be a battleship in size if I made it regularly! The coconut ice sounds very good! I doubt dieticians would approve of it, but I’ve pretty much decided it’s better to eat a little of all foods one likes instead of limiting red meat, pasta, etc. and other “bad ” foods. Life IS too short! I’m not a hedonist (much- comes with being a Presbyterian! Ha!), but I do think a person should enjoy life in big and small ways. I’d say the French approach to food or a Mediterranean diet would suit me well, though I probably would blow it by eating too much of either! Ha!
I’ll have to see how Gadcom works out. As I mentioned, I have started on ancestry.com, but haven’t put a lot of effort into it yet, because of other obligations. Oh, and too dang much time on this computer!