A few days ago I woke up to James tripping all over himself and crying as he came into my room. Yeah, good morning to you too, buddy.

This isn’t all that typical of an occurrence anymore now that he’s four, so we had a serious issue on our hands.

He would not reveal what the problem was. After repeated prodding it finally came out…we were not having baked oatmeal for breakfast. If we were, it would already be baking in the oven.

That’s right. I have a nutritious breakfast food that my son cries about if he can’t have it.

Don’t you want to know what it is and how to make this miraculous food? Would it totally blow your mind if I told you it was very easy? And that there are multiple ways you can moderate it to your liking?

• 1/3 cup melted butter or applesauce, or combo (I usually do half of each)
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup of sweetener (sugar, brown sugar, stevia, maple syrup, whatever you like)*
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup plus 2 Tablespoons milk
• 3 cups oats (regular or quick)
• 1 – 2 cups of cut up fruit and/or other toppings

*I’ve played around with the sugar and I think the recipe is still good with only half a cup. But do what you like.

Remember how easy it is to make your own stock with all those leftover bird parts at this time of year?

I was telling my mom about how thrilling it is making stock, and so she decided to pull out an old recipe that her grandmother used to make. That’s right – my Great Grandma Mary, born in 1900, full-blooded German, hard-working, tough as nails, make everything with lots of butter type of lady.

I don’t remember her much – most of what I know is what has been told. When I was a kid, I mostly remember visiting her in a nursing home. She recognized me less and less, and finally didn’t remember me at all.

But what a great way to remember her – through the kitchen. I think she spent half her life there.

I asked my mom where she think the recipe originated, and she said probably a newspaper or magazine, circa 1940s or 1950s. It was fun to think of that – real food hasn’t changed much in the past century, and it probably won’t even as tastes evolve.

The best part? It is made with wine. I’m a little obsessed with cooking with wine lately (maybe because I can’t have any?). You can’t go wrong with wine. It always turns out good.

Oh and the next best part is that it is super easy.

And the other best part is that it is so versatile – you can substitute any number of the ingredients to suit your tastes.

Are you ready for this?
You need:

• 1 large onion, sliced thinly
• 2 stalks celery, sliced
• 3 T butter
• 6 T flour
• 1 t salt
• 1/4 t pepper
• 8 cups turkey stock or broth
• 2 potatoes cubed (you can peel if you want, but I didn’t)
• 2 carrots, cut into small pieces
• 2 small zucchini cut into strips
• 1 10 oz. package frozen corn (I personally don’t have any 10 oz packages, so I just guessed)
• 1 cup white wine (recipe suggest Chablis)
• 2 cups turkey pieces
• 2 T chopped parsley

On my epic quest to become a better cook, I’ve encountered a seemingly insurmountable challenge: homemade bread. There’s incentive for making it, since the store-bought varieties of bread can be laden with high fructose corn syrup and preservatives. And of course homemade is cheaper than fresh bread you could buy at bakeries.

Here’s the problem: it’s not all that easy to bake homemade bread that is good. It either has the wrong texture or the wrong flavor.

Another problem: I cannot do complicated recipes or things that require very much effort. That would just go against everything I represent.

Miraculously, I actually found a recipe that I have made a few times—it is so delicious that I devour most of it before I have the chance to offer it to my children (that might be a slight exaggeration but not much). I got it from my sister-in-law’s friend’s friend’s friend or something like that. It has been adjusted so that it has whole wheat in it—delicious and nutritious.

Here we go.

Ingredients:

• 1 C dry oats
• 2 C boiling water
• 1 T softened butter
• 2 tsp salt
• 1/2 C honey
• 1/2 C lukewarm water
• 2 1/4 tsp dry active yeast (1 package)
• 2 1/4 C bread flour
• 2 1/4 C whole wheat flour
• Extra flour for kneading

Instructions:

• Put the oats in a bowl and pour the boiling water over them. Then go take a nap or something, because you’ll need to wait an hour until they’re nice and mushy.
• Dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm water (about 115 degrees F)—this will take about ten minutes. Note: yeast is very tricky! It needs to be nice and bubbly to work. If it doesn’t get bubbly, toss it out and try a new batch.
• While waiting for the yeast, add the butter, salt and honey to the mushy oats. Stir until blended.
• Stir the yeast water (is that a term?) into the oat mixture. Slowly add the flour until you have a uniform dough. A standing mixer is ideal, but if you’re like The Pragmatist who hasn’t invested in such a luxury yet, you can use your hands. Sticky but fun.
• Cover with a damp towel. Leave in a warm place and let it rise for an hour.
• Remove the dough and knead it for about 10 minutes on a floured surface. Add a little flour at a time as you knead to make the dough easier to handle.
• Shape the dough into one or two loaves and put into one or two buttered bread pans (depending how big you want the bread to be. The Pragmatist likes it either way: two nice and small loaves or one ginormous loaf).
• Cover the pan(s) with a damp towel and let the dough rise for another hour in a warm place.
• Once the dough has doubled in size, bake it at 350 degrees for about 50 minutes.

Ways to enjoy this awesome bread:

• Fresh out of the oven
• As a side at dinner
• For French toast
• With peanut butter, butter, jam or Nutella
• When you want a snack but can’t figure out what. The honey inside makes it taste good plain.

Recently I’ve been on a quest to learn how to cook from scratch. I have been blundering through this assignment in an orderly manner for the past several months. You’d never think there could be such well-planned disasters. But to my dismay, planned menus don’t always lead to a good meal. Things like whole wheat pasta and homemade tortillas and even peanut butter cookies are vicious creatures waiting to attack if you are caught off guard.

Since I am a pragmatist, I used to rely heavily on recipes that called for condensed cream soups—you know, cream of mushroom, cream of chicken and cream of celery. I gave these up for the assignment because of some suspicious ingredients: MSG, tons of sodium, preservatives with long names. Not to mention, I discovered that canned foods in general are suspicious because can lining is made of BPA (toxic chemical). Oh yes. AND—have you ever noticed that the soup sort of maintains the shape of the can when you pour it out? That just seemed wrong and gross.

But I started missing the taste (and convenience) of those condensed soup based recipes. I did some research and found the perfect, pragmatic solution: homemade condensed cream soup substitutes. What’s great about them is that you can prepare them in less than ten minutes!

Here’s what you need. This is the substitute for one can of condensed cream of chicken:

2 T butter
3 T flour
1/2 c chicken broth
1/2 c milk
Salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the flour. Slowly stir in the milk and chicken broth and heat the mixture until it bubbles. Keep stirring the whole time. When it bubbles, reduce heat and continue stirring until it thickens.  When it’s thick, add salt and pepper to taste (a few shakes is good).

Voila. More natural cream of chicken soup, ready to go into your recipe.

I am thrilled about this discovery—not only is it a pragmatic substitute for condensed cream soups, but it is tastier, healthier and easy to alter. Here are a few more tips:

• For low-fat versions, use 1 T butter and nonfat milk.
• For a condensed cream of celery soup substitute, saute about 1/4 c of finely chopped celery in the butter until tender before you add flour. Don’t use chicken broth (unless you want to have chicken flavor) – use a full cup of milk instead.
• For a condensed cream of mushroom soup substitute, saute about 1/4 c of finely chopped mushrooms in the butter for 2-3 minutes before you add the flour. Use a full cup of milk instead of half milk, half broth.
• To adjust consistency, increase or decrease the amount of flour you use.