Well over a year ago, I reviewed My Mom's Temporary Home. My mom has since moved back into her old home, now rebuilt, so I'd like to officially give it my OK. (Official = on the internet.)
If you remember the review (it's OK if you don't, I didn't even remember most of if), I gave the old house a 9 out of 10 - granted, I may have been feeling nostalgic because it had just burned down, but even so it was a good house. And an extremely well-insured house.
Over the course of the past year and a half, my mom's boyfriend Tom, who owns the house, has been working diligently to make sure the contractors rebuild it properly, while my mom has been steadily building a collection of decor for the new set-up.
It was a long, long time coming, but the new and improved old house was finally ready for moving into a few weeks ago, and I came by for waffles one Sunday morning to see it.
It's fabulous. The new kitchen is humongous. My mom's a petite woman, but this kitchen almost makes her look like a hobbit. Except that it's so perfectly made for her that you would never guess she had ever had a different kitchen. Marble counter tops, beautiful hardwood cabinets, a fridge that would fit at least three of my moms inside, (well, that was creepy, Thea,) and one absolutely unnecessary Wolf stove with at least six burners.
It's a far cry from the kitchen we had when I lived with her in high school. We shared a one-room studio at 58th and Shattuck in Oakland. We could hear gunshots at least once a week. Tiny bugs were constantly infesting the kitchen - ants, moths, moth larvae, spiders... of course it didn't help that my lazy 17-year-old ass refused to wash dishes. But most noticeably, our kitchen was tiny. Like 3' x 6' tiny. And there were other places we lived where we had no kitchen at all.
So when my mom excitedly picked up a small remote control, pointed it at a (previously nonexistent) skylight, and said, "Watch this," it was little bit like watching her win the lottery. The skylight slowly opened up to the fresh morning air of the Berkeley hills, no giant-pole-with-a-hook-on-the-end required.
Also their new eco-friendly toilet has 2 flush options. Two.
Revamped old house: 10.5 out of 10. It's more house than I or my mom ever - realistically - expected her to live in.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Mighty Leaf Tea
In an impulsive move at a local Walgreens, while searching for a compass (long story), I hastily grabbed a variety pack of Mighty Leaf Tea. Pretty packaging, high price tag - how could I resist?
Kudos to them on the clever, if mostly obsolete, phone number: 1877 MY T LEAF. Very clever.
So they've got some clever marketing people, but beyond that, how good is the product? This is what I set out to find, trying each tea in the variety pack one by one.
First: African Nectar. Gross. Red tea has always been a little weird to me, and this one smelled like cough syrup and tasted... kinda funny. I don't recommend it unless you love red tea.
Rating: 0. I didn't even finish it. I couldn't even pawn it off on the tea-lover across the aisle.
Second: Organic Spring Jasmine. Deeee-licious! A rich, complexly floral blend of green tea goodness and exotic, summery jasmine. I'm absolutely buying a pack if I ever make it over to that Walgreens again.
Rating: 10. Best Jasmine Green Tea I can remember.
Third: American Breakfast. The name says it all: boring, and not particularly healthy. I added half and half (half milk, half cream, how can you go wrong?) but kept wishing I was drinking something else anyway.
Rating: 3. Might as well be drinking Nestea.
Fourth: Green Tea Tropical. Good. Pretty much what you would expect.
Rating: 5. Good. But not for $8.99 a box.
Fifth: Orange Dulce. The moment I plopped it my cup, my cubical neighbor asked, "Do you smell Fruit Loops?" I didn't. She has a freakishly sensitive sense of smell. But after a couple dunkings the scent finally made it all the way to my mostly-useless olfactory glands and there it was - an unmistakable hint of Fruit Loops. Here's a secret Fruit Loops doesn't want you to know: all of their fruit flavors are actually orange. For the most part. So it's not really that surprising that Orange Dulce smells like toucan-peddled cereal. The taste is surprisingly delicate, if slightly too sweet.
Rating: 6. Different, unexpected - a solid afternoon tea.
There are two left in the box that I haven't tried yet: Organic Earl Grey, and Chamomile Citrus. I'm not a fan of chamomile, but I love Earl Grey, so I'll let you know if either of these changes my overall rating of Mighty Leaf Tea.
Which so far is an 8.5.
Update:
Chamomile Citrus: Expectedly soothing, yet also surprisingly refreshing. It was a pleasant drinking experience and a nice wind-down between a long work day and an astronomy midterm.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10. If I was really into chamomile it probably would have been awesome.
Organic Earl Grey: As a cautionary note, I was too lazy to rinse out a few drops of half-and-halfy coffee at the bottom of my cup before pouring in some hot water and plunking a silky biodegradable bag of Organic Earl Grey in there. But as soon as my hyper-powered office air conditioner cools it down enough to take a sip, I'll tell you what I think anyway.
Should be any minute now.
It smells nice.
Aaaaaaand... it's a little light on the bergamot. I suppose that would be a plus to some people, and it's probably healthier that way considering large amounts of bergamot have been known to cause nerve damage... um... but it's my favorite thing about Earl Grey so I'm a little disappointed.
Rating: 6 out of 10. I've had some really good Earl Greys and this one was just good. Not Really good.
My new overall rating of Mighty Leaf Tea: 7.9 out of 10.
Kudos to them on the clever, if mostly obsolete, phone number: 1877 MY T LEAF. Very clever.
So they've got some clever marketing people, but beyond that, how good is the product? This is what I set out to find, trying each tea in the variety pack one by one.
First: African Nectar. Gross. Red tea has always been a little weird to me, and this one smelled like cough syrup and tasted... kinda funny. I don't recommend it unless you love red tea.
Rating: 0. I didn't even finish it. I couldn't even pawn it off on the tea-lover across the aisle.
Second: Organic Spring Jasmine. Deeee-licious! A rich, complexly floral blend of green tea goodness and exotic, summery jasmine. I'm absolutely buying a pack if I ever make it over to that Walgreens again.
Rating: 10. Best Jasmine Green Tea I can remember.
Third: American Breakfast. The name says it all: boring, and not particularly healthy. I added half and half (half milk, half cream, how can you go wrong?) but kept wishing I was drinking something else anyway.
Rating: 3. Might as well be drinking Nestea.
Fourth: Green Tea Tropical. Good. Pretty much what you would expect.
Rating: 5. Good. But not for $8.99 a box.
Fifth: Orange Dulce. The moment I plopped it my cup, my cubical neighbor asked, "Do you smell Fruit Loops?" I didn't. She has a freakishly sensitive sense of smell. But after a couple dunkings the scent finally made it all the way to my mostly-useless olfactory glands and there it was - an unmistakable hint of Fruit Loops. Here's a secret Fruit Loops doesn't want you to know: all of their fruit flavors are actually orange. For the most part. So it's not really that surprising that Orange Dulce smells like toucan-peddled cereal. The taste is surprisingly delicate, if slightly too sweet.
Rating: 6. Different, unexpected - a solid afternoon tea.
There are two left in the box that I haven't tried yet: Organic Earl Grey, and Chamomile Citrus. I'm not a fan of chamomile, but I love Earl Grey, so I'll let you know if either of these changes my overall rating of Mighty Leaf Tea.
Which so far is an 8.5.
Update:
Chamomile Citrus: Expectedly soothing, yet also surprisingly refreshing. It was a pleasant drinking experience and a nice wind-down between a long work day and an astronomy midterm.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10. If I was really into chamomile it probably would have been awesome.
Organic Earl Grey: As a cautionary note, I was too lazy to rinse out a few drops of half-and-halfy coffee at the bottom of my cup before pouring in some hot water and plunking a silky biodegradable bag of Organic Earl Grey in there. But as soon as my hyper-powered office air conditioner cools it down enough to take a sip, I'll tell you what I think anyway.
Should be any minute now.
It smells nice.
Aaaaaaand... it's a little light on the bergamot. I suppose that would be a plus to some people, and it's probably healthier that way considering large amounts of bergamot have been known to cause nerve damage... um... but it's my favorite thing about Earl Grey so I'm a little disappointed.
Rating: 6 out of 10. I've had some really good Earl Greys and this one was just good. Not Really good.
My new overall rating of Mighty Leaf Tea: 7.9 out of 10.
Monday, October 15, 2007
The Environment
Thank you, Blog Action Day, for giving me something fun and different to review on an otherwise depressing Monday morning.
Someone was trying to argue with me the other day that it would be easier to just find a new planet to live on because we're destroying this one.
How bad is our environment? I'll admit that it's been a long time since I've been anywhere that anyone would call a natural environment. You know, a place where it's hard to find anything that people have built. I'm not even sure places like that exist anymore outside of, I duno, Canada probably. I almost remember something about it, though. It was like... it was like... I don't know. I've lost it. I know it was special in some way, but I can't tell you how anymore. It was something about the smell - but I've hardly had a sense of smell since I moved to the city. It had to do with being able to focus on something farther away than across the street. Part of it - I think - was related to wondering which rock or tree would protect me best if a sudden rainstorm came through. And I think - I think there was a time and a place where dirt was OK. It sounds crazy - but I remember digging in the dirt - you know, that stuff at the bottom of construction sites that they drive the piles into - with my bare hands, and it getting under my fingernails, and it being OK. Not OK for long, but OK for awhile because I was planting something. In the ground. Like a little flower or a tomato vine. Crazy. But it's been so long since I've experienced any of those things, I don't really know how bad our environment is.
But wait. It's not like I'm somehow outside the environment just because I live in a city. I still get rained on, I still see wildlife every day. Sometimes when I'm watching pigeons while I'm waiting for the bus, I like to imagine a city where they all have the proper number of toes, and all their feathers are clean and neatly groomed. Other birds manage to pull it off on their own, but pigeons seem to take city life especially hard. Maybe if we looked out for our pigeons, we'd save ourselves a little bit of disgust every time we pause on the sidewalk. We'd enjoy cities a little bit more. For that matter, maybe we should take care of the humans who seem to take city life especially hard - but this is a review of the environment, not local politics. My point is, I do know that at least in San Francisco, the rain is relatively acid free, the tap water is pretty darn drinkable, and while global warming seems to have somehow made us colder over the past few years, all in all we're really not that bad off. ...Yet.
Even with all it's problems, I still give our environment a 10 out of 10. I've never, ever, seen a better one. Even in Hubble pictures.
Someone was trying to argue with me the other day that it would be easier to just find a new planet to live on because we're destroying this one.
How bad is our environment? I'll admit that it's been a long time since I've been anywhere that anyone would call a natural environment. You know, a place where it's hard to find anything that people have built. I'm not even sure places like that exist anymore outside of, I duno, Canada probably. I almost remember something about it, though. It was like... it was like... I don't know. I've lost it. I know it was special in some way, but I can't tell you how anymore. It was something about the smell - but I've hardly had a sense of smell since I moved to the city. It had to do with being able to focus on something farther away than across the street. Part of it - I think - was related to wondering which rock or tree would protect me best if a sudden rainstorm came through. And I think - I think there was a time and a place where dirt was OK. It sounds crazy - but I remember digging in the dirt - you know, that stuff at the bottom of construction sites that they drive the piles into - with my bare hands, and it getting under my fingernails, and it being OK. Not OK for long, but OK for awhile because I was planting something. In the ground. Like a little flower or a tomato vine. Crazy. But it's been so long since I've experienced any of those things, I don't really know how bad our environment is.
But wait. It's not like I'm somehow outside the environment just because I live in a city. I still get rained on, I still see wildlife every day. Sometimes when I'm watching pigeons while I'm waiting for the bus, I like to imagine a city where they all have the proper number of toes, and all their feathers are clean and neatly groomed. Other birds manage to pull it off on their own, but pigeons seem to take city life especially hard. Maybe if we looked out for our pigeons, we'd save ourselves a little bit of disgust every time we pause on the sidewalk. We'd enjoy cities a little bit more. For that matter, maybe we should take care of the humans who seem to take city life especially hard - but this is a review of the environment, not local politics. My point is, I do know that at least in San Francisco, the rain is relatively acid free, the tap water is pretty darn drinkable, and while global warming seems to have somehow made us colder over the past few years, all in all we're really not that bad off. ...Yet.
Even with all it's problems, I still give our environment a 10 out of 10. I've never, ever, seen a better one. Even in Hubble pictures.
Friday, October 12, 2007
October
October. The eighth month. Wait - doesn't "oct" mean eight? What the hell?
You know, like "octopus"?
Whatever.
October. The... tenth month. The month of Colombus Day, that glorious holiday when all the retail stores breathe a sigh of relief and set out their aluminum Christmas trees.
The month of Halloween. Candy! Costumes! Drunken wandering in the streets all night wearing hot pink pumps that are a size too small! What a beautiful holiday.
October. The month when we finally stop complaining how cold summers in San Francisco are, because it's now a full seven or eight degrees colder.
October. Libras turn a year older in October, and they're the funnest sign to call "old". They never want to joke about it though, they just get sad.
I don't know about other people's Octobers, but mine have always been eventful. There's been romance, danger, adventure, and a good heaping of confusion. It's always the time of year when I'm not exactly sure what the hell is going on (that almost never happens) but I guess I'll just go with it. (Also almost never happens.)
This October has mostly just been Wheat Thins and flipping through advertising annuals from the 80s, but I also, as you may have heard, got a new Xbox, and I got to bring my umbrella to work for the time since I started there.
One lesson of October: be careful what you wish for. This morning I mentioned that I needed a bulletin board, and now I have one that is, literally, longer than I am tall and two inches short of the top of my cubicle. I keep looking back over my shoulder, expecting some kind of portal to open up on it's surface, and Post-it note goblins to come out and kidnap me. And then take me back to their perilous world of see-through pushpins.
I also started this blog in October. One year ago. Happy Birthday, blog!!!!
I give October a 7 out of ten. I might have given it an 8, but then it would just look like I was trying to be cute with the whole oct thing.
You know, like "octopus"?
Whatever.
October. The... tenth month. The month of Colombus Day, that glorious holiday when all the retail stores breathe a sigh of relief and set out their aluminum Christmas trees.
The month of Halloween. Candy! Costumes! Drunken wandering in the streets all night wearing hot pink pumps that are a size too small! What a beautiful holiday.
October. The month when we finally stop complaining how cold summers in San Francisco are, because it's now a full seven or eight degrees colder.
October. Libras turn a year older in October, and they're the funnest sign to call "old". They never want to joke about it though, they just get sad.
I don't know about other people's Octobers, but mine have always been eventful. There's been romance, danger, adventure, and a good heaping of confusion. It's always the time of year when I'm not exactly sure what the hell is going on (that almost never happens) but I guess I'll just go with it. (Also almost never happens.)
This October has mostly just been Wheat Thins and flipping through advertising annuals from the 80s, but I also, as you may have heard, got a new Xbox, and I got to bring my umbrella to work for the time since I started there.
One lesson of October: be careful what you wish for. This morning I mentioned that I needed a bulletin board, and now I have one that is, literally, longer than I am tall and two inches short of the top of my cubicle. I keep looking back over my shoulder, expecting some kind of portal to open up on it's surface, and Post-it note goblins to come out and kidnap me. And then take me back to their perilous world of see-through pushpins.
I also started this blog in October. One year ago. Happy Birthday, blog!!!!
I give October a 7 out of ten. I might have given it an 8, but then it would just look like I was trying to be cute with the whole oct thing.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Oblivion!
That's right, it's my first video game review. I'm now - officially - a complete nerd. Although I suspect everyone who reads this already knew that.
My boyfriend Keithen and I were hanging out in a video game store the other day, and he said to me,"You you wanna get an Xbox 360?"
I replied, "No. I'm hella broke."
So he said, "Yeah, but I have money, because even though we have equal salaries, I'm not a compulsive buyer like you. And don't say 'hella'."
So about two hours later we left with our new baby, our beautiful little Xbox 360. When we chose our first game for it, we got Oblivion, because I figured there was no way we would finish it before Christmas and we would save ourselves from having to pay $60 for Bioshock.
So we got Oblivion. I spent many long, lonely hours with it's prequel, Morrowind, on our first Xbox (now acting out for attention from the dusty bottom shelf of our TV stand). Now I realize that Morrowind was widely acclaimed and a bit of a landmark for it's genre - which, if you don't know much about video games, is the genre of Super Nerdy I-Totally-Just-Scored-a-Plus-Seventeen-Hit-Point-Mage's-Staff-and-Now-
I'm-Gona-Go-Kick-Some-Dwarf-Ass-With-It Nerdified Nerddom.
But Morrowind kind of sucked. I mean, I liked it alright, except for the really bad character designs (for some reason you can only give your female character a receding hairline) and the fact that you have to wander all hell-and-gone over the whole entire countryside anytime you go on a mission. It was a beautifully animated countryside, but that shit gets old.
So when I learned that the sequel had come out with improved character designs and and a fast-travel option, I knew I had to have it.
Yeah, that was a year and a half ago. I'm not sure if we're late adopters, or just poor.
So my initial thoughts on Oblivion. (I haven't finished it yet. I have to make it last until Christmas, remember? Oh yeah, and I have a job and a life.)...(OK so I obviously don't have much of a life. But I do have a job.)...(OK technically I'm an intern. Shut up.)
Oblivion is like a big fat "fuck you" to Morrowind. For some reason my female character still has a receding hairline, but that's the only thing they didn't fix really, really well. I was kind of disappointed that there's no big floating jellyfish (just look it up), but there are cute little deer frolicking around in Oblivion's wilderness. And deer are cute.
So Oblivion gets an 8 out of 10 from me. Woo video games!
My boyfriend Keithen and I were hanging out in a video game store the other day, and he said to me,"You you wanna get an Xbox 360?"
I replied, "No. I'm hella broke."
So he said, "Yeah, but I have money, because even though we have equal salaries, I'm not a compulsive buyer like you. And don't say 'hella'."
So about two hours later we left with our new baby, our beautiful little Xbox 360. When we chose our first game for it, we got Oblivion, because I figured there was no way we would finish it before Christmas and we would save ourselves from having to pay $60 for Bioshock.
So we got Oblivion. I spent many long, lonely hours with it's prequel, Morrowind, on our first Xbox (now acting out for attention from the dusty bottom shelf of our TV stand). Now I realize that Morrowind was widely acclaimed and a bit of a landmark for it's genre - which, if you don't know much about video games, is the genre of Super Nerdy I-Totally-Just-Scored-a-Plus-Seventeen-Hit-Point-Mage's-Staff-and-Now-
I'm-Gona-Go-Kick-Some-Dwarf-Ass-With-It Nerdified Nerddom.
But Morrowind kind of sucked. I mean, I liked it alright, except for the really bad character designs (for some reason you can only give your female character a receding hairline) and the fact that you have to wander all hell-and-gone over the whole entire countryside anytime you go on a mission. It was a beautifully animated countryside, but that shit gets old.
So when I learned that the sequel had come out with improved character designs and and a fast-travel option, I knew I had to have it.
Yeah, that was a year and a half ago. I'm not sure if we're late adopters, or just poor.
So my initial thoughts on Oblivion. (I haven't finished it yet. I have to make it last until Christmas, remember? Oh yeah, and I have a job and a life.)...(OK so I obviously don't have much of a life. But I do have a job.)...(OK technically I'm an intern. Shut up.)
Oblivion is like a big fat "fuck you" to Morrowind. For some reason my female character still has a receding hairline, but that's the only thing they didn't fix really, really well. I was kind of disappointed that there's no big floating jellyfish (just look it up), but there are cute little deer frolicking around in Oblivion's wilderness. And deer are cute.
So Oblivion gets an 8 out of 10 from me. Woo video games!
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Green Tea
So I started this new job where I have to... um... wake up early. Yeah I know. I'm almost like a gown-up now. Well, they have coffee here, and a little coffee maker, and I have to wake up early. So I've been drinking a lot of coffee.
But then I found myself coming home at night and talking really fast and staying up until midnight and making Keithen say things like,"Thea. SHUT UP SO I CAN SLEEP," and using lots of run-on sentences and talking really fast and repeating myself a lot.
So I bought a little box of green tea to keep in my cubicle. It has all kinds of health benefits, and I figured it would have enough caffeine to ween me off coffee, but not too much to bring back the old talking fast problem. I go to the little place in the office where the UV-filtered water cooler is, press the little steamy mug button, get myself a nice steamy styrofoam cup o' hot water, and put my little green tea bag in it.
It doesn't really do the job. It does solve the problem of coffee-breath. Green-tea breath is much less offensive than coffee-breath. But it doesn't do the job the way coffee used to. I don't know what I'm going to do.
But I do like green tea. There are many kinds of green tea and the one I bought from Walgreens is really basic cheap Bigelow green tea. If you've never had green tea before, it tastes a little bit like a partly-cloudy spring day. All the new leaves are out, but only some of the flowers are starting to bloom.
Just in general: 9.9 out of ten. Green tea is full of anti-oxidants and it's delicious even when it's 99 cents for a giant box in Chinatown.
As a substitute for Coffee: 5 out of ten. There just has to be something with... more coffee in it. No - no, don't say the "D" word. Just don't say it.
But then I found myself coming home at night and talking really fast and staying up until midnight and making Keithen say things like,"Thea. SHUT UP SO I CAN SLEEP," and using lots of run-on sentences and talking really fast and repeating myself a lot.
So I bought a little box of green tea to keep in my cubicle. It has all kinds of health benefits, and I figured it would have enough caffeine to ween me off coffee, but not too much to bring back the old talking fast problem. I go to the little place in the office where the UV-filtered water cooler is, press the little steamy mug button, get myself a nice steamy styrofoam cup o' hot water, and put my little green tea bag in it.
It doesn't really do the job. It does solve the problem of coffee-breath. Green-tea breath is much less offensive than coffee-breath. But it doesn't do the job the way coffee used to. I don't know what I'm going to do.
But I do like green tea. There are many kinds of green tea and the one I bought from Walgreens is really basic cheap Bigelow green tea. If you've never had green tea before, it tastes a little bit like a partly-cloudy spring day. All the new leaves are out, but only some of the flowers are starting to bloom.
Just in general: 9.9 out of ten. Green tea is full of anti-oxidants and it's delicious even when it's 99 cents for a giant box in Chinatown.
As a substitute for Coffee: 5 out of ten. There just has to be something with... more coffee in it. No - no, don't say the "D" word. Just don't say it.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Homemade Granola
So you read the title and thought, "OMG Thea's become a hippy. She's probably growing out her armpit hair and installing hydroponics in her closet. I can't believe she made her own granola.” Well, it’s true folks. No, not the hippy part, just the granola. But I had a damn good excuse.
I went grocery shopping the other day, at Safeway.com, and while I was sitting in front of the breakfast isle I thought, “Hey, I should get oatmeal.” This was a couple weeks ago, you know, the dog days of summer - that sweltering time of year when San Francisco is about 57 degrees. So I ordered what I was pretty sure was oatmeal.
This is one of the hazards of online grocery shopping. You can never know exactly what you’re going to end up with. It makes it exciting. In the past, I’ve mysteriously received cat food (I don’t have a cat), ice cream (which really wasn’t so bad), a fish filet (oooh it was terrible, don’t tell Keithen it was ever in the house, or he’ll convince himself that he can still smell it), and very large, heavy amounts of filtered water, none of which can be explained, and fortunately none of it was on my bill. But this time, I just screwed up and didn’t read what I was buying. Instead of Quaker Oatmeal, I accidentally purchased Quaker Oats. Forty-two ounces of them.
Same thing, right? I opened it up one morning, hoping to make a nice mushy bowl of oatmeal, but there was something not quite right about it. It was all oats, no meal. Whole oats. Like what horses eat. I thought, “Well, I’m sure it’ll be just as good as oatmeal,” and scooped some into a bowl, added boiling water, and gave it a stir. You know, oatmeal-style. People, they are not the same thing at all. Not at all. OK chemically, biologically, exactly the same – but in terms of breakfast they are completely different. Oats are inedible to humans in their natural state.
So my next thought after dumping my horrific breakfasty failure was, “What the fuck am I supposed to do with all these fucking oats?” And then it hit me.
Granola.
I googled “homemade granola” and discovered that granola only requires three ingredients: oil, some kind of sweetening substance, and of course oats. Oh, I was so totally going to spend the rest of the day making granola. Until I ran out of maple syrup. Which I did pretty fast, actually.
I used grapeseed oil because it’s healthy and has a light, slightly nutty flavor. (If you have not discovered the wonder that is grapeseed oil, I strongly suggest you go find some right now and get fryin’.) I added some maple syrup, a spoonful of honey, an unnatural amount of cinnamon, and finely chopped blueberry yogurt Luna bar that, realistically, neither of was ever going to eat. I mixed it all together, put it on my nonstick cookie sheet, and baked it up.
Mmmmm. My granola was a golden-brown, cinnamony success.
Then I made homemade crackers. They weren’t as good.
This morning I finished the week’s worth of granola that I made, and I plan to make more, because I’ve barely made a dent in my 2+ pounds of oats. I don’t know how future batches will turn out, but this batch of homemade cinnamon blueberry-Luna-bar granola gets a 7.8 out of ten.
I went grocery shopping the other day, at Safeway.com, and while I was sitting in front of the breakfast isle I thought, “Hey, I should get oatmeal.” This was a couple weeks ago, you know, the dog days of summer - that sweltering time of year when San Francisco is about 57 degrees. So I ordered what I was pretty sure was oatmeal.
This is one of the hazards of online grocery shopping. You can never know exactly what you’re going to end up with. It makes it exciting. In the past, I’ve mysteriously received cat food (I don’t have a cat), ice cream (which really wasn’t so bad), a fish filet (oooh it was terrible, don’t tell Keithen it was ever in the house, or he’ll convince himself that he can still smell it), and very large, heavy amounts of filtered water, none of which can be explained, and fortunately none of it was on my bill. But this time, I just screwed up and didn’t read what I was buying. Instead of Quaker Oatmeal, I accidentally purchased Quaker Oats. Forty-two ounces of them.
Same thing, right? I opened it up one morning, hoping to make a nice mushy bowl of oatmeal, but there was something not quite right about it. It was all oats, no meal. Whole oats. Like what horses eat. I thought, “Well, I’m sure it’ll be just as good as oatmeal,” and scooped some into a bowl, added boiling water, and gave it a stir. You know, oatmeal-style. People, they are not the same thing at all. Not at all. OK chemically, biologically, exactly the same – but in terms of breakfast they are completely different. Oats are inedible to humans in their natural state.
So my next thought after dumping my horrific breakfasty failure was, “What the fuck am I supposed to do with all these fucking oats?” And then it hit me.
Granola.
I googled “homemade granola” and discovered that granola only requires three ingredients: oil, some kind of sweetening substance, and of course oats. Oh, I was so totally going to spend the rest of the day making granola. Until I ran out of maple syrup. Which I did pretty fast, actually.
I used grapeseed oil because it’s healthy and has a light, slightly nutty flavor. (If you have not discovered the wonder that is grapeseed oil, I strongly suggest you go find some right now and get fryin’.) I added some maple syrup, a spoonful of honey, an unnatural amount of cinnamon, and finely chopped blueberry yogurt Luna bar that, realistically, neither of was ever going to eat. I mixed it all together, put it on my nonstick cookie sheet, and baked it up.
Mmmmm. My granola was a golden-brown, cinnamony success.
Then I made homemade crackers. They weren’t as good.
This morning I finished the week’s worth of granola that I made, and I plan to make more, because I’ve barely made a dent in my 2+ pounds of oats. I don’t know how future batches will turn out, but this batch of homemade cinnamon blueberry-Luna-bar granola gets a 7.8 out of ten.
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