Countess Crawley eschews this Oat Cuisine
Happy National Oatmeal [Raisin] Cookie Day! Now I know yesterday was all about the luck o’ the Irish but today I’m making the choice to talk about the kilt and clan of my people so plbbbbbbbbbbbbt.
Ah oatmeal. Oatmeal that staple of breakfast diet, a healthy cholesterol reducing whole grain, cheap to grow, fast to make, loved by all…most everyone. Except me. Me, the girl who will eat snails with a grin on her face has one food she’s really never embraced and it’s mother frakking traditional breakfast oatmeal. In fact when that’s all that’s offered I will often skip breakfast rather than eat it. Oats are delicious and have a great flavor, I just find the gelatinous muck that people eat for breakfast oddly unpleasant in both taste and texture. Someone once noted that it’s because I try to eat it plain and that oatmeal is delicious but that’s after you load it up with sugar, and cream and fruit. Well then pish posh all I can think is that you lose all those healthy advantages. At that point you may as well be making the multitudes of delicious things I do like oats in. Bread, cakes, waffles, scones…cookies!
Oh hey it’s national Oatmeal Cookie Day. Well then cookies it is.
Oats were a grain largely considered inferior until the American Cereal renaissance of the 19th century. Until a conglomerate of evangelical Christians came together to form Quaker Oats (none of them actually being quakers mind you) the oat was eaten in few places. The Greeks and Romans considered it to be little more than an infected/sickly strain of wheat. While Asian in origin it hardly shows up in Asian cooking. Middle east—forget about it. Yet hand it to a Scotsman and he’ll eat for days.
Why? Well the grain is one of few suited best for extremely wet, moist regions. Aside from rice which gets grown in flooded patties, oat requires far more moisture than any other cereal grain. The kernels are extremely tough and fibrous which makes it harder and more time consuming to process for consumption. There is also a higher risk of rancidity from fat oxidation—oats are higher in fat as well as fat consuming enzymes. Moisture triggers the enzymes, the fats break down and voila—rotten oats. For whatever reason the wet climate of Scotland and temperament of its people provided the perfect land for this grain to grow, thrive and survive in diets. Just slightly to the south the English despised the grain. Now my understanding is that the climate of England is pretty darn wet so I doubt growing the stuff was a problem. Nope the Brits just had a thing against the oat…they were defined by it!
Samuel Johnson’s Definitions (published in 1755) was the most widely used dictionary in England for 130 years until the first installment of the golden standard Oxford English Dictionary. Impressive not just because it was the first dictionary, Definitions is thought to have been almost entirely developed by Johnson with minimal clerical help and only in 9 years. It also incorporated far more, uh, opinion than you might be used to seeing in our current dictionaries. How do I mean? Well let’s look at the English evaluation of oats: “A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland appears to support the people.” Now supposedly, never one to miss an opportunity to insult the English, my Scottish ancestors would quip back “And England is noted for the excellence of her horses, Scotland for the excellence of her men.” Though unlike Johnson’s line, I’m not sure who to credit that gem to.
So now why do we all know the happy, smiling man on boxes of Quaker Oats? Good ol’ fashioned American ingenuity. Well technically they were German immigrants but I think once you’ve moved to America and built an empire out of nothing all thanks to glorious mechanization and processing techniques of the Industrial Revolution, you are sufficiently American to me! Take that as you will—I’m not espousing rhetoric here. The American Dream was to do exactly this…now if it was done on the backs of union labor or fingerless children; well that’s a debate for blogs more politically open than mine. No thank you let’s just get to the cookies.
I LOVE this recipe and the fact that it’s vegan just means I can make it for literally anyone I know. Except the anti-raisin crowd. Some people just can’t help themselves from being difficult can they? Just love to discriminate against a classic cookie flavor. Fine! You can malign this recipe with chocolate chips if you like but me, I am equal opportunity for my cookie additives and some days you just can’t beat a craving for this soft, moist and raisin studded treat. A surprisingly healthy one too thanks to grapeseed oil and flaxseed. These are cookies that are good for the heart.
Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
Modified slightly from Vegan with a Vengeance Read more
Anyway the book release, and main subject for this week’s scifriday post, is actually an urban fantasy book. The aforementioned “
They also have hyper-religious talking mice. Not the Disney varieties mind you; these mice don’t captain tugboats or sew pretty dresses. Aeslin mice spend their time either worshipping their religious figures (in this case our main character) or form hunting parties with some pretty serious hardware to kill other animals for religious feasts. Obviously you’d want to keep them away from the Gorgons. Despite being rodents, invasive of our main character’s privacy and congregants with a fanaticism that the Catholic Church would lust after, these characters are pretty much the most damnable adorable thing I’ve read about in ages. I totally want my own colony because their love for food and my love for baking would presumably go hand in hand quite nicely.
My week got pretty hectic the last, aw hell, the last month has been pretty hectic and so my post for Sword & Laser’s January book pick is late…. I guess there are worse things that could be late though, like say my period, which as I tried to explain to the good doctor was impossible unless I’m carrying the next Christ child but that’s a whole other story. This month I actually managed to read, and finish, the book selection for Sword & Laser. When I say read I should say devour. Old Man’s War is a fantastic fun scifi read from John Scalzi and it was also the inaugural download on my Kindle from Christmas. I’m glad I didn’t pop my e-reader cherry with something I found to be miserable (The Stress of Her Regard was my second download and I’m trudging through it on principle) and instead I whipped through this book in less than a week. Teenage me scoffs but adult, working with no free time me is impressed so shut up pompous teenage Olivia. Go hang out with 21 year old Will Wheaton and wane poetically about nerds and Nietzsche.
What you find out is that the human race is embroiled in a violent, bloody war of colonialism that makes Manifest Destiny look like a tea party. In our defense, at least this time we didn’t start it, but we sure as hell don’t intend to lose either. 99% of the conflicts are solved with bloody, bloody mutilating deaths and it turns out that most of the old farts who get a new lease on life end up dying during those teeny ten years of enlistment fighting an array of fantastically un-human like alien races. There are moments of gory terror, but for the most part the fight scenes are comical, right down to the depiction of Perry smashing an opposing force of Lilliputians that kind of fail at the hand to hand combat portion of one planetary squabble. This particular moment, though darkly funny, also makes you pause and wonder why so many people are so willing to fight these land wars. Doesn’t anyone object to the horror, the gore, the needless death? Scalzi manages to perfectly sum up through your journey with Perry why the CDF grunts keep fighting: each other. In the end it’s the bond between brothers and sisters of the military that makes them fight regardless of whether or not the cause is right, whether or not they individually believe in the cause (and some don’t) they fight to defend each other. The writing beautifully sums up the psychology behind military brotherhood without forcing the reader to agree.
Well what about GERMY YUMMIES? A different kind of germ: wheat germ!
I’m trying to keep track of everything but it’s getting harder and harder to make it through the week. I am getting busier at work, it’s a good thing, but I can tell that as things ramp up I’m only going to be able to keep all the balls in the air so long. Something is gonna fall. It also means I’m even more tired by the end of the day than usual because I’m running around trying to make sure I don’t forget anything important. It also makes getting into the kitchen during the week a real challenge. I need recipes that are simple and easy for those nights when I absolutely have to make something to distress but don’t have the physical energy to roll out fondant.
I know that cancer research is all well and good but I’m really wondering why we aren’t funneling more money into research to quell our need for sleep. That could be the deprivation-crazy speaking though.
Dorie Greenspan, of course, has a recipe for just about everything and sure enough she had a recipe for cookies that uses a healthy serving of marmalade or preserves. Aha and it was a snap to come together. Not a recipe that needs any chilling, rolling or pressing. Just simple cookie dough that you can scoop out after mixing. I was pleased to discover how perfectly these cookies baked into round, puffy delightful and simple treats. I will say I wasn’t quite satisfied with the level of jam flavor that came through and so I made a glaze with the extra marmalade to smear on top. I think it just added a little extra to the cookie.
I had written a fairly negative, ranty post the other day on an airplane. While I tempered it at times and tried to blunt my tongue as often as possible, I am hesitant to share it for fear of offending many people I hold near and dear. It’s so hard to know how honest you can be on the internet and not offend people. I’m not attacking any person in particular with it but I am highly critical in it. While I mull over what to do with a post like that I turn instead to happier things…like National Cookie Day! Everyone loves a cookie right?
But wait…it’s Tuesday. I should be posting a weekly skinny post for you. Well here’s something you can love even more: a low calorie but all natural cookie. How about that huh? Huh? Okay I admit I cheat a bit, they aren’t huge honkers and whenever you make a portion small enough it’s going to be low in calories, but these are delicious, chewy cookies great for sitting with a cuppa and pontificating. Should I share some of my more unpopular thoughts with the world or are these kinds of harsher criticisms better kept to small company where my intentions and tone won’t possibly be misconstrued? What would Georgia Mason do? What would Tim Gunn advise? Truth or tact? Should I use my words for harsher truths or hold back and observe some level of societal kindness? It’s so hard to know.
