baked oatmeal

I've recently developed an addiction to breakfast foods.

I guess it's a better addiction than one to desserts which is where I was, oh, about two months ago.

Now I feel like I can get away with delicious things as long as they're for breakfast which naturally gives me a chance to work them off throughout the day (mmm clever).

I've been going through batches of granola, nectarine smothered french toast, nutella stuffed french toast, egg-in-a-holes, plain puffed rice cereal with yogurt and honey, and I even bought some milk and had real live cereal which I haven't had in years! (I really should have capitalized on that and crossed one of the items off my list. Damn.) And don't even get me started on brinner! Heavenly scrambled eggs, bacon and egg cups with roasted cherry tomatoes, pancakes with chocolate chips and bananas! I think I might need to buy a waffle iron...

Today, for a change, and because it's all chilly outside, I decided to make some baked oatmeal. Actually, what I really wanted was the true, blue, glue oatmeal, but I couldn't remember the water ratios. Ah well, next time.

Anyhoo, I whipped it up, stuck it in the toaster oven, then completely ignored it while it cooked.

And of course, I totally burnt it. It's pretty black, actually. I'm going to go ahead and blame the toaster oven. My new toaster oven which is almost the most awesome toaster oven ever conceived ever.

Let me count the ways:

1. you can fit two (2) racks in it. That's right. If you wanna bake up some amazing chicken fingers and damn, you also want to make garlic sweet potato fries and of course the damn things won't fit on the same pan; it totally doesn't matter cuz you can and you still don't have to turn on the oven.
2. apparently, it's really hot and cooks things in half the time. Case in point: my baked oatmeal.
3. it's also a -- dramatic pause -- rotisserie. Yes. It rotisserizes things! I've never needed this function so much as after I had Idle Husband's dad's fireplace meat. Meat, on a skewer, slowly rotating on an open flame = the best meat I've ever had -- in my life. But we don't have an open fire and I've just been getting by on the spices and rotating them every 10 minutes by hand. Now we are the proud owners of a rotisserie and it's awesome. I used it last night for the first time. I also burnt our fireplace meat last night for the first time, because I had no idea what temperature the oven should have been at or how long it'd take. I thought it was done, oh about 20 minutes or so before IH got home. But he wanted to see it turning, in action, so I just let it go until he could see it.  So refer back to #2.
4. it's got knobs. I don't know if you know how important old-fashioned knobs are, but once you've had some stupid digital display, you really realize the convenience of a knob. Stupid having to stand there and push the up and down buttons forever to get to a temperature because it thinks it's being awesome by always remembering the last temperature you used even though you only used 450 that one time in a whole month; then stupidly having to cancel to change the temperature because you got it wrong and if you don't cancel and redo all of that button pushing, you have to wait for it to heat up to the desired temperature so you can change it; and then, after all of that, stupidly forgetting to push start and then walking away and having a shower thinking it's going to be on for an hour, but it's not and oh yay, you get to eat dinner at 9 now, good for you; oh and don't forget about the lack of an automatic on. Wanna cook something longer than 2 hours? Better remember to reset the damn thing; and why are all the button functions explained with a picture? Is this for the illiterate? Well, good luck, nonreaders. I don't even know what half of those pictures are. Cookies? A potato? Why do I even need a potato button? -- eh hem, all of these problems and more are solved with a simple knob.

Anyway, I digress.

The baked oatmeal is still really delicious despite its burnt state. I just had two bowls of it (it's been scientifically proven that a good, hearty breakfast is important). I like to have it with a drizzle of honey and a couple good sized dollops of plain yogurt (not that fancy flavoured yogurt. Why bother with that runny stuff when you can add some jam to this marvelous as-thick-as-I'm-going-to-find-it-in-Canada yogurt and make it any flavour you want?).

The recipe I use I (naturally) found on the internets somewhere, but it's been so long (because I was on a baked oatmeal kick last winter), I can't give you a link. Instead, I'll painstakingly type it out for you. Cuz I like you like that.

Baked Oatmeal
1/3 cup vegetable oil (canola or olive or maybe applesauce would work...I should try that)
1/2 cup sugar (brown would probably be nice,too)
2 eggs (ostrich...no; I'm kidding)
2 1/4 cups old fashioned rolled oats (that's important. I'm not talking about the quick cook kind)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk (I've run out of clever things to amuse you with so you don't have to be bored reading an ingredient list)
Special add ins! raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg, bananas, vanilla, walnuts, almonds, coconut, sliced apples or other fruits -- you know, use your tastes, judgement, brain, and add how much you want of what you want. But, like, don't get too crazy.

Whisk the oil, sugar, and eggs together until well mixed and slightly glossy. To this, add everything else (dramatic!). Pour into a baking dish (I use a glass one, 11 x 7 x 1.5 in or 2 QT or 2 L if you want to get all technical. But the only reason I chose this smaller dish is cuz it fits in my toaster oven perfectly) and bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes (maybe not 30. I definitely should have checked mine at 20 due to my resulting burnage). I like to let it cool ever so slightly before digging in, but hey, that's me. I don't like burning my tongue. Maybe you do, I don't know.

weekend walk

Have I ever mentioned that fall is my favourite season?

sunday brunch

Nutella stuffed french toast with caramelized bananas (or delicious banana mush, whatever)

This is what I wanted to make Idle Husband for his birthday breakfast, but since his birthday was on a Wednesday, I couldn't coordinate it (read: I couldn't get up at 6:30 to have it made for 7).

This is super easy to make. The only difference is the Nutella inside. So all you have to do is make a sandwich with Nutella, then follow the directions for french toast, substituting some sugar in the egg mixture instead of the cinnamon (for a sweet crispy crunch). Easy and yummy!

I'm a total idiot

So yes, obviously, I'm pretty thankful it decided to be all nice fall weather instead of crap fall weather all of a sudden, and I'm definitely rejoicing by suiting up in painting clothes and painting the trim around the house.

But get this. Just listen. I had some stupid brainwave at the end of last week involving reading the paint can and seeing what the lowest rated temperature was for it to work and still dry in a moderate amount of time.

So I take the long and harrowing journey down to the basement storage room, pull out the can, and guess what? That stupid exterior paint will dry in temperatures as low as 2 degrees. TWO.

Remember that day when it was sunny and NINE and I was like, OH MY GOSH, YOU GUYS! THERE'S NO WAY PAINT'LL DRY AT 9 DEGREES! DAMN MY LUCK!

There. I'm a total idiot.

Anyway, regardless of my own foibles, I've actually got a lot of the trim painted already and I've only been at it two days. Mind you, I've only painted the trim I can reach while balancing precariously on my too-short ladder in the most awkward of spots, but that's still a large chunk of it done.

And I've come to realize that there are no good ladder spots anywhere but on the porch. The lawn? Heck no. The driveway? You'd think so, but you'd be wrong. Oh, and don't even get me started on how stupid it was trying to paint the wooden trim just behind The Bed of Junipers today. It was like a total gymnastics routine. Good thing I realized I could reach most of the flower box from the ground because I really didn't feel like negotiating the ladder in there -- again.

Now I'm completely covered in welts, and I'm pretty convinced I'm 100% allergic to junipers. And even though I was in the blazing sun, I wasn't a quarter way across when I decided it would be quite beneficial to make my way out of the junipers (again) to get my coat so at least my arms would be protected from them even though I knew I would be at risk for heat stroke. My hands...well, they've depuffed and I'm only marginally wanting to scratch the skin off them, so I've made some progress in that department finally.

I think if I were living in one of the houses across the street from mine, I would have parked my chair up to the window, popped some popcorn, and enjoyed "that crazy swearing girl's" juniper dance all afternoon. I'm not going to lie and say I wouldn't have been cheering for her to dump the paint all down the front of her shirt. She was teetering over unstable branches, stupidly carrying an almost full can of paint like a baby while holding the paint brush and using her other hand to grab wayward branches in order to stablize herself. She was totally asking for it.

The saddest thing is that I have to drag the ladder over there eventually, because I need to paint the top of the flower box. The flower box that can't sustain any flowers because it's too hot. That makes the task even more worthwhile.

I have been doing things in stages, though. And I'm trying really hard not to be anal about getting it all done promptly in one hour (like I do other things). So the first day, I did all the super easy yet time consuming stuff. And the only bummer that came out of that was that all the super easy stuff is now done and has even got a second coat on it already, so that's the end of my actual painting fun.

I do have a nice tip for you, regarding painting. As I said, I'm not painting everything perfectly in one day. I have other stuff to do, too, surprisingly.

So if you're thinking I'm packing up my paint and cleaning out my brush every time I quit, you'd only be half right. I am putting the lid back on the paint can. That's just good common sense.

The brush is another matter all together. Here's what you do in handy gif form!

Just wrap your paint brush up -- good and tight -- in some ordinary tinfoil. If I wanted to store it longer, I'd probably also put it in a plastic bag for extra air safety.

Then stick it in your fridge (if you want it to last longer, opt for the freezer)

your sad pathetically empty fridge

When you're ready to use it again, just warm it a little (from the freezer, warm it a lot), unwrap, and get to work! It's like you didn't even stop! Genius!

*disclaimer: this trick doesn't work if you want to store your paintbrush for more than a month or a year or some other crazy amount of time. It's just until you can get back to it. If that's not going to be until next spring, then, you know, wash it or toss it.

6 weeks ago

I started working on a little project involving this super purple spray paint.

Here's what I was painting:

I was originally going to give these away. Understandably, I didn't like how they looked. The paint was chipping and, well, they weren't cute. I like cute.

Anyway, I wanted to spray paint them but I just couldn't find the motivation. On one particular trip to our most favourite store, I stewed over paint colours. As usual, I couldn't make a decision. But then, while we were still wandering around, I had a moment of inspiration, got my paint, and a day later, I sprayed them.



They look so great, don't they?

Um, no. That picture is all an illusion. You see, by spraying them, I unintentionally highlighted all of their flaws. The chips, the cracks, everything was about 100% more obvious.

What to do! What to do! I had some mini ideas like maybe smearing on some glue to act as a cover so once I applied another coat of paint, none of those cracks and bare ceramic would be visible.

I wasn't sure that would work, so I decided this needed a call to mom. She knows everything.

She suggested I use caulking. Just some regular, paintable caulking. Ok. That made sense to me.

So a week after, I finally remembered to buy some caulking (they sell smaller tubes now that don't require a caulking gun -- thank goodness).

I tested this idea on the worst looking duck and I'm not going to say it was 100% successful. Since I was only focusing on the damaged areas, I could really tell the difference between what I'd put caulking on and what I didn't. It was really hard to get the caulking as smooth as the ceramic. Mom kept insisting I had to take my time and smooth it and work it. Well, I tried that -- unsuccessfully -- the caulking was drying too quickly. If I even looked at it, it would ruffle up with texture. So I messed around with this duck for another week, and honestly, I was at the point where I didn't even want to bother with this project anymore.

I finally decided to cover the whole test duck in caulking. After I sprayed it, I decided that I really didn't mind the texture. It was a little more interesting than just shiny and smooth.

So instead of spending hours sanding and applying and sanding again, I put the caulking everywhere. On every surface of each duck, and I made sure the texture was nice and not ratty looking.

After a couple applications of caulking and more than a few coats of spray paint (not because the caulking was hard to cover but because I kept missing some of the harder to spray spots), here's what came out:

You can kind of see the slight texture, right?

Check it out:

I definitely would have liked them to be smooth, but I'll take this over that any day.

Now I have an even bigger problem.  I have no idea where to hang them.