Banana Oatmeal

This is short and sweet.  So much so that it's almost embarrassing to write down as an actual recipe.  Truth be told, it's a go-to for me.  Both kids LOVE it, like yell, "Yay!  Oatmeal!" after asking, "What's for dinner?"  It's just this kind of no-brainer meal that is sanity-saving for me after a long day when I have not planned well and have two exhausted children who need to be in bed asap.  This filling oatmeal is definitely on the wear them out, fill the up, and put them down plan.

 We love steel cut oats.  They are slightly chewy and almost nutty in flavor.  They are also closer to the actual plant than rolled oats, so they are less processed.  Maybe it's my Scottish heritage that makes them a comfort food not the good-for-me factor.

Soaking them makes them more easily digested and their nutrients more bioavailable.  If you are new to soaking (I've not yet graduated to sprouting), here is a quick primer: The whole idea of soaking grains (and nuts, seeds, and beans) is to trick the plant.  The plant is naturally coats its seed with a substance meant to keep it germinating until an animal has eaten it, digested it, and deposited it elsewhere.  It's a very easy and smart way for a plant to spread itself as widely as possible before sprouting a new generation.  Dandelions rely on wind to carry their seeds far and near.  Other plants rely on roaming animals pooping far away. 

On that note, here's the recipe if you still feel like eating:

1 1/2 cup steel cut oats
1 ripe banana
Sea salt
Cultured butter
Cinnamon

Soak the oats perferably overnight or at least 6 hours.  Mine were only soaked for about an hour and did take longer to cook, about 20 minutes.  After soaking, place in a fine strainer and rinse.  Put into a large pot and barley cover with water, about 1/4 above the oats if you barely soaked like me, less if you soaked.

Soaking oats

My very scientific way of measuring

Cook over high heat until boiling, stirring frequently.  Once you get a good rolling boil, reduce heat to low to medium low.  Stir constantly, and cook until thick.  When you scrape your spoon across the bottom of the pan, it should make a line that the oatmeal slowly slides back into.

A rolling boil

Consistency check

Turn the heat off and let cool slightly in the pot.

Chop your banana and divide between two bowls.  Mash with a fork.

Add oatmeal, stir, and top with cultured butter, a few dashed of cinnamon, and maybe some honey.  Honey will make oatmeal soupy, so go easy on it.

Let it sit a few more minutes to cool, let the kids eat, and hope your bowls look like this in a few minutes.

The dinner table was all but silent tonight

Beginning the Blog

1 January 2012

Ah, the blank page.  Fresh, open, mine.  Tonight, the quiet clicking of keys is peaceful and familiar.  It's been years since I sat down to write.  As 2012 begins, the days lengthen and I resolve to do a few things for myself, including finally putting my English degree to good use.  Bear with me as I tentatively touch my toe to the blogging pool.  Here's hoping it's warm and that sometimes my words stir a ripple.

My children are asleep; my husband sips scotch at the other end of the couch.  He laughs, shaking his head as he says that he's been trying to get me to write as long as we've been married.

Today is a day for keeping resolutions.  My goals are simple this year: be positive, satisfied, peaceful.  Then there are the everyday things...

Make time to "date" my husband again and get back the pre-parenthood romance.  
Be a more calm, patient mama.
Sit and watch my children play in the mud without worrying about how to get them into the tub and how much more laundry they are making.
Miss the friends I've moved away from without feeling resentful that we moved because my husband has a steady, secure job.
Sew more for my own babies.
Obsess less over mopping the floors and keeping the house spotless.
Get back to yoga--I need the workout, serenity, and time to myself.
Do more in my community as a childbirth educator and doula and advocate for better maternity care and breastfeeding in Mississippi.
Read a few "smart" books, not just mysteries, vampire chick lit, and birth/breastfeeding books.


With three cats, a dog, a busy three year old girl, and a one year old boy, our house will never be perfect, nor will I.  While writing tonight, the image of  Mu Qi's Six Persimmons kept coming to mind--the little (I'm assuming) Buddhist monk working his brush as an act of meditation.  In keeping with that sort of Zen philosophy, I hope to remember that enlightenment ultimately comes with an emptying of self, letting go of expectations and just Being--being Present and Open to the richness of life without passing judgment.  The more I let go, the more I will be able to give.  May my words be spontaneous, expressive, and clear like those carefully placed persimmons.

Percolating Percussion

*It's July, and this was written in February...forgotten in the files.  I have plans to write more consistently soon*

Tonight it’s raining, drumming against the gutter.  If I close my eyes, it almost sounds like steady, hollow music of a tin roof.  The rhythm appeases my Aquarian sensabilities—the water bearer, the creative spirit, the “heavenly bohemian.”  I march to the beat of my own drum.  Trite, but satisfying.  Its baseline a steady thump that keeps me on track.  Its tempo the pace of my daily interactions.  I dance and hope its hook strong enough to draw those around me into its chorus.  

Lately this means I’m running on caffeine, idealism, and a head full of ideas looking to escape onto the page or into the ear of the first willing victim, be it human, feline, canine, or technological.  I catch myself jotting the most random in my phone.  Reading the first line note titles is like reading random sentence from the walls of Faulkner’s brainstorm bedroom—a little crazy when you scratch the surface, but there is solidity, cohesion beneath (I hope).

Quiet nights with my whole house sleeping, excepting my persistent cream-point feline shadow, are a treat.  I should be sleeping, or finishing Raising Your Spirited Child, a title that understates the comical and exhausting ins-and-outs of daily life with Isabelle.  She needn’t know that her mother and grandmother were (are?) unruly, gloriously defiant girls, too.

Bedtime is one of my favorite evening rituals.  She loves the undivided mama attention, and I love the things she blurts out.  My little Scorpio goes out with a bang.  Tonight, she announces that she missed me.  I was gone with a birth recently, so I told her that I was working.  She immediately laughs and says, “No, Mama.  Only Daddy goes to work.  You don’t have work clothes.” 

Got me there.   Okay, so I just wear my regular clothes to my work, no blue digicamis to guarantee the Navy will never find me if I end up in the water. 

 “I help mamas having their babies,” the oversimplified kid explanation.

“You’re a good doctor, Mama.”  Strike two.  

“I’m not a doctor, sweetie.”  

“But you helped my eye feel better today.”  Take that victory lap around the plates.  

“Well, I am good at doctoring things sometimes.”

We rock for a while and she says, “You had me like that time Will just came out of your tummy in the bathtub .”  So she does remember those pictures.  She loves seeing the pictures on our computer.  We pull up her baby pictures and let her click around.  One day we looked up to Will emerging into the world with her delighted exclamation of, “Look, a baby!  Oh, it’s just Will!”  

 Tonight I tell her that she was born in a hospital. 

“Why?” 

“Because Mama wasn’t brave enough to have you at home.”  I finally have the opportunity to tell her how much I wanted to give her that same start.  She is three, but she brought it up and is following her original idea like a hound on the hunt.  

“It’s okay, Mama, I just didn’t want to come out when I was a baby in your tummy.”

Where did that come from?  Oh, little girl, you have no idea.  We evicted you.  It wasn’t nice, and I’m still sorry for doing it that way.  You showed us, fist pressed to your cheek at your debut.  Possibly, there was a finger up, telling everyone present what you thought of our ideas of what should be and when.  Who could blame you.

I love her boldness.  I love that my passions are shaping her ideas about motherhood and the amazing capability of a woman’s body.  I love that the qualities I nitpick the most in her are my own weaknesses, that her intensity is most matched to that of my own.  I love that the flood of emotions from her birth still carries me in tow, that a tiny new life changed my course and fixed my center all at once.