Newest Convert to Steel Cut Oatmeal

I remember visiting a friend in New York City some five years ago and seeing a can of McCann steel-cut oats on her shelf. In this I am a late adopter.

I've eaten oatmeal every morning for fifteen years, using traditional Quaker Oats that at first I cooked in a microwave oven, for the past year, just allowed to cook in hot water straight from my Cuisinart CleanWater countertop filtering system. I've run the gamut of oatmeal toppings, including chopped figs, chopped peanuts, blueberry and tomato preserves, homemade marmalade, brown sugar, toasted sesame seeds, and tahini along with chopped fresh fruit. This past year I've just topped the oatmeal with toasted bran, wheat germ, tahini, raisins, and chopped apples.

This morning I cooked my first batch of steel-cut oats from Trader Joe's. This is Slow Food! Steel-cut oats are whole-grain oat groats cut into pieces in a steel buhr mill instead of rolled. The raw oats really look like meal, stone-hard, irregular pieces of oats that must simmer 30 minutes in lots of water before they are ready to eat.

What a taste sensation. Through the years I've gotten calloused. Few gustatory discoveries now delight with Eden-like drama but this morning's oatmeal took me back to God's Paradise. This is nothing like the oatmeal I've been eating all these years. It's chewy and tasty!

I devised new toppings. I used clotted organic half-and-half, also from Trader Joe's, a scant teaspoon of raw brown sugar, some raisins and seven, raw, unpeeled almonds. (A friend who regularly consults an Ayurvedic physician told me health required a daily dose of eight almonds. I think seven is more authentically Asian. An even number does not encourage further growth.)

The result is perfection. I'm a convert!