Frazz by Jef Mallett for February 13, 2021

I have eaten raw rolled oats as a treat since the 1960s. It started out making simple granola that I could snack on later. Then one day I wanted the snack but hadn’t made the granola. So I just melted a bit of butter and poured it over a bowl with raw rolled oats and some brown sugar (optional cinnamon). it was BETTER than cold granola, because WARM! With that as background, I would, and do, occasionally just eat a spoonful of rolled oats. You do have to chew it awhile, which is no bad thing.

I don’t se the joke here. Rolled oats (uncooked) with milk is a common everyday breakfast for a lot of people.

I’ve heard Guys from Brooklyn just take a mouthful an sit on the stove until it cooks!

There is instant oats.

If you’re not going to bother to cook it, I wouldn’t bother to eat it. Why bother to even buy it?

friend eats raw oatmeal mixed with Greek yogurt. Can’t say I get that. But to each his own. But reading this at 0500 means I am likely to cook up a batch a few hours from now.

Well. In Austria I used to eat raw oatmeal all the time, mixed in with yogurt, raisins, and hazelnuts (filberts, if you prefer). Presto-chango: Müesli! It was a divine start to the day. “Remiga Haferflocken – Sahnig Zart” from Hofer’s. And never a hint of the young lad’s problem.

Ahh poo…. wait for it.

In England they feed the horses on oats, in Scotland they feed the men. But oh, what horses, and oh, what men! (Pace Samuel Johnson and Walter Scott.)

I like a handful of dry uncooked steel-cut oats as a quick snack. I do not have any digestive fall from this habit…

Given two to three weeks, your gut will adapt to pretty well any diet.

Really, you don’t have sixty seconds for the Quick Oats? Talk about lazy!

We have a small crockpot on a timer.Warm steel cut oatmeal ready for breakfast.

Ya know, they DO make instant oatmeal! Oh, but who wants to wait for the water to boil?

Good thing he’s not in class. And why isn’t he?

1 min 5 seconds in the microwave is all it takes for oatmeal every morning for me!

The Mrs Is a Scot. Oatmeal is a given part of the winter breakfast menu. Especially after this California boy introduced her to the gustatory pleasure of raisins or sliced dried apricots and slivered almonds added in the cooking process. And a dash or two of cinnamon. MMMMM

Speaking of …. be back in a few.

I really hope he didn’t add the boiling water after eating the oats.

Child needs 1 minute oatmeal and a microwave. Get dressed while it cooks.

Uncooked oatmeal with some raisins in it is a quick, healthy snack. I used to have this mid-morning and mid-afternoon at my desk (back when I went in to an office).

My wife has uncooked oatmeal all the time, with yogurt and thawed frozen blueberries.Personally, I find instant oatmeal a sugary abomination. YMMV.

Jef Mallet’s Blog Frazz17 hrs ·

Vesa, a Finnish foreign exchange student, was my brother for a year. He was the right guy at the right time; he changed my life, changed it for the better, and I sincerely hope he has at least an inkling of that.

He also changed my life in more trivial ways, like showing me that rolled oats (that’s what we Americans call Oatmeal) with a little brown sugar was a delightful snack, like cookie dough without the moisture or the salmonella. To this day, I breakfast on rolled oats, uncooked. Usually with a little oat milk (nothing against dairy, but this is what my life has come to if I don’t want to have a stroke, given my genetics) and granola, but sometimes dry, with a little brown sugar, just like Vesa taught me. It goes without saying that I work at home. Fiber is not without its consequences.

And yet it’s the Scottish flag, not the Finnish flag, on Frazz’s shirt. Because, have you ever had oat cakes? Real Scottish oat cakes? Find them. Try them. Thank me at your leisure. They are transcendent.

My life was changed by a Finn, and I dream of living in (or, hell, just seeing) my ancestral Norway. But I want to snack like my ancestral Scots.