Yuck, blah, oatmeal.

About two and a half years ago, I went out on one of my road-trips. I drove to Florida via New Orleans and on to North Carolina. Up to Ohio then Michigan and lastly Iowa and then home via Old Route 66. On this trip, I made a few changes in how I ate. Instead of loading up on an Egg McMuffin with a deep-fried slab of "hash brown" potatoes for breakfast, I made some instant oatmeal in the microwave in my motel room.

For lunch, I tore a page out of Jerid's playbook and went to Subway and got a sub without cheese or mayo. The bottom line is, because I was on the road for over three weeks, this change in eating became a habit. In the evening, because I wasn't automatically stopping at MacD's, or Wendy's, or Burger King, I gave my choice of dinner some thought and ended up loosing thirty pounds.

Continuing the pattern after I got back, I switched to the Quick Cooking oatmeal in the cylinder for two reasons. The first was cost, those little packets are costly per serving. The other reason was my palette was tiring of the mushy Instant type.

After consuming a package of Quick Cooking Oats, I switched to the Old Fashioned variety. Same price, still cooks up quickly in the microwave. Oatmeal, as a food, is not glamorous, but it's damned good food. It's cheap per serving, it cleans out your vascular system and it has fiber. Nuf said?

I heard all of the bull about the steel cut oatmeal, so I bought some McCann Irish. It's texture was marginally better, but the stuff seems costly as hell for oats. It also, unlike the Instant, or Quick Cooking stuff needs to be cooked for "30 minutes".

Well well, it appears that Trader Joe's has Made in the USA Steel Cut Oats for a lot less mulah than the Irish stuff.

So here we are. For daily use, I now get the store brand oatmeal at Albertsons when it's on sale of course. For $2, you get 42 Oz. of oats. That's 2 pounds, 10 Oz. of oatmeal which should supply you with a warm tummy for about about two months. Every now and then, I will have a yen for the steel cut type and will take the time to nuke the TJ's. The label says "Microwaving steel cut oats is not recommended". I say bullshit, thirty minutes on 30% works fine for this old sailor.

Next week, I may stop swearing like an old sailor and stop nuking my steel-cut in favor of making it in a pan which will take another thirty minutes to clean up.

But don't bet good money on it.