It’s on obscenely cold, gray days like this that I like to take a nice chilly, deep breath in and take stock of all the nice little modern conveniences that make life bearable. Things like central heating, fleece lined leggings, and maple and brown sugar oatmeal packets.
If you have never stopped to think about the joy that is central heating, congratulations! For one has never known true suffering until one has opened one’s fridge only to be blasted with what feels like a gust of warm air. Yes, when one’s milk and Lunchables are cozier than one’s own self one can only surmise the slumlord has turned off the furnace again. Such was the case with the first apartment my husband and I shared. In an effort to save money, our landlord would simply turn off the furnace and then insist it was broken and he was waiting for a part to ship. With all four burners of our gas range at full bore and the oven set to 750 degrees Kelvin we called the slumlord to report if the “part” didn’t arrive soon we’d be taking a page from Tom Waits’s album and tear up the floorboards in the living room to cook us up a box-spring hog. Within an hour the furnace was miraculously fixed.
Sadly, these early days of discomfort predated the arrival of my second favorite cold-weather comfort, fleece lined leggings. Legging technology has made more advances in the past three decades than the NASA space program. Recently, I found my old 80s leggings and having put them on quickly remembered why I had stopped wearing leggings for two decades. Made of a strange combination of poly-cotton blend and unyielding spandex, these leggings glide on with the ease of chain-mail over fish scales. After an hour the spandex usually decides to go out for a smoke break leaving the crotch sagging down to the kneecap in a grand impression of Dick Van Dyke’s penguin dance from Mary Poppins. Now I understand why Batman and Superman always wore their undies OVER their poorly made leggings. Today’s leggings, however, seem to be made of the same stuff as Rebecca Romijn (no-longer Stamos)’s Mystique costume from X Men. AND they now come LINED WITH FLEECE! If you have never enjoyed the sensual caress of body-hugging fleecy leggings…well you are probably a very hairy man that hates the way it tugs at your leg hair like velcro. Either that or you are one of those self-righteous busy bodies who don’t think leggings are pants. Guess what? They are, by definition, pants. Check your sources and then deal with your irrational fear of the female body cuz you are missing out on the singular best piece of women’s fashion ever created!
But perhaps the best ever modern day cold-weather convenience out there is the maple and brown sugar instant oatmeal packet. Anyone who hates mornings as much as I do but still feels the need to oh I don’t know….EAT understands the appeal of instant oatmeal. For those of you uninitiated, I share the following recipe. You will want to start this the night before to save on prep work and clean up and give you those extra 30 seconds in bed tomorrow morning. The cat will thank you.
- Pour contents of one packet maple/brown sugar instant oatmeal into travel mug.
- I recommend a travel mug that has not gone through the dishwasher as this causes the vacuum seal to break leading to chunky leaks.
- Throw away packet.
- Let sit overnight
- In the morning, add 1/3 cup hot coffee to dry ingredients. (that’s more than the instructions call for)
- Shake like hell. This is where you are really going to test that vacuum seal.
And viola!! A delicious oatmeal maple latte!
“But Psarah,” you ask, “can’t I use apple cinnamon or cinnamon raisin?”
My answer is a resounding fuck NO!
- Apples and raisins taste fucking terrible in coffee. (Jesus, people! Standards!)
- Choking hazard.
- I find they clog up my crazy straw. As I usually drink this on my way in to work, I find a crazy straw to be a necessary safety precaution. Hands at 10 and 2 people! Not 12 and coffee cup! Save a life. Invest in a crazy straw.
Add this delicious recipe to your morning routine and tell me it doesn’t put an extra pep in your step. After all, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Start treating yourself right and take those extra 30 seconds to optimum health. You’ll be glad you did.