Response to Shelby

In her article entitled Preparing a Meal, Ms. Springer dicusses just that: preparing a meal. The meal she reports on making was homemade pizza for her family. Now, unless she has fine Italian familial roots (and maybe she does, but for this point, we’ll pretend not), I can make a prediction that the materials she needed for the pizza (and rest of side dishes) were already packaged, already ready items that just needed to be put together like legos to make the regular Joe feel like he actually accomplished the task of making a homemade meal. For instance, the crust was either dough bought, or an already ready crust that was just waiting for the preservative laden canned mush called sauce and low moist, non-fat, pasteurized, machine shredded mozzerella cheese to be placed on top before the Frankenstein could be brought to life by the oven. I will coin the term home-frankenooked for the kind of meals we claim to home cook. By this I mean we take separate packaged items we buy at the grocery store – things that came from “body parts” of deceased food – to make a new monster. I think Polan would agree with me, Springer goes on to talk about his chapter about processed food, in that our food today uses the remnants of real food to make the artificial crap that tastes appeals more to our senses. All in all, I apologize if it seems I think Ms. Springer is not a legit culinary wizard, she probably is, but I do have a problem with “homecooked meals” when all the ingredients come from a can.

Blog #3 - Battle of the Oatmeals

Sunday mornings around the Ticknor house would always be ushered in by the amazing smell of fresh oatmeal – made with real natural oats and love by my darling mother. I remember the taste of that oaty breakfast – nothing but oats, water, and sugar – the simplest of ingredients, but pure deliciousness nonetheless. But those were days of simply – when the only worries were if my friends were home to play. Middle school morning mayhem ushered in new kind of oatmeal, the kind that the ingredient of love is cut away from – instant oatmeal. This was the pre-packaged, unloved child of oatmeal – a sloppy mush that could never amount to what its parent is. Whereas with the homemade oatmeal, you could taste each individual piece of oat, with its straight from the farm grainy texture, with instant oatmeal everything is mashed up together to make a paper like pulp that resembled baby food. Gross.

In an article that I found concerning the nutritional information about the two products – to my surprise, one serving of instant oatmeal actually contains more fiber and nutrients than regular oatmeal (although not a significant amount). I found that this was because in the refining process, they add oat flower and nutrients to the mix. The article went on to say that there isn’t much of a difference between the two foods. The main difference that it did point out was texture and flavor (two of the things that I distinguished in regular oatmeal’s superiority).

In conclusion, if you’re in a rush and still want a solid breakfast food and can handle mushy texture, grab the instant oatmeal – it won’t live up to the dynasty of its forefathers, but it will still give the great health benefits of classic oatmeal.