A fist full of oatmealor Oatmeal à la Me

What better way to lighten the mood (because even I get tired of all this drama, doom and despair eventually) than with a recipe for delicious food? Waking up drenched in sweat and adrenaline every morning is not pleasant or fun, but if you have to wake up in the morning – anxiety or not – it helps to know that there are four little wide-mouthed pint jars in the cupboard just waiting for you to haul your ass out of bed, down the hall, and into the kitchen to make

Oatmeal à la Me

First, the jars. They contain rolled oats, those big black chewy soft raisins that taste like prunes, dark brown sugar and pecans or walnuts. There is also a jar of milk in the fridge – get that out now too. So you have your five jars lined up on the counter. Take a look. This is about to become your beautiful breakfast.

(I use these little jars because I only buy about a week's worth of food at a time, from the bulk section.)

Get a small pot with a tight-fitting lid and bring to boil one cup of filtered or spring water (we filter our tap water before drinking or cooking to get rid of the heavy chlorine taste ... nasty). Along with the water, put in one fist full of the raisins and give a little stir. They'll plump up as the water comes to a boil. You can also add a tablespoon or more of bran or wheat germ if you feel moved to do so. When the water is boiling, stir in a half cup (for me that's one great big handful) of the oats, put the lid back on, and let it come back up to a boil. Turn the heat way down and let them simmer – careful not to overflow the pot! – for about two minutes. Do not stir. Then take them off the heat and let them sit for about three more minutes, absorbing the water and the steam and getting all plump and flakey and delicious (as compared with the gummy, gluey, sticky or soggy version you get when you boil the oats too long, or stir them too much).

When you take off the lid, all the liquid should have been absorbed. If it hasn't you have two choices. If you're like Mr. A, and like wet food, you can leave the extra liquid in. If you're like me, and think extra water detracts from the delicious flavors you're trying to focus on, you can drain it out.

Next, dump the oatmeal into a beautiful bowl or soup plate. Because you haven't been stirring it while it cooked, all the raisins will be on the bottom – so when you dump it onto the plate, they end up on top. Pretty!

After this there is one more ingredient I haven't mentioned yet: butter. It's optional, but good – especially if you use the brown sugar, which I highly recommend. Just put a little sliver of butter (or a big one) on top of the hot oatmeal, and when it starts to melt, sprinkle the brown sugar on top of that so it melts down into the melted butter and starts to drool down the sides of the mountain of oatmeal.

Then dump a handful of pecans or walnuts on top of all that. I like to toast them first and chop each nut in half (the walnuts in the photo are raw, and I was out of raisins). In my toaster oven this takes about the same amount of time it takes to make a regular piece of toast – but I do have to watch them as they toast, because every nut is different and if the oils in the nut begin to burn the flavor goes south fast.

Finally, take the milk and pour it very carefully, in a thin, thin stream, all around the edges of your island of oatmeal – not on top, and not in the middle! That would dilute the buttery brown sugary goodness. The milk should surround the oatmeal like a moat, not a lake. Unless you like wet food, in which case – go wild.

I make this exact breakfast almost every day and have not gotten tired of it yet. If you don't like raisins, you can substitute any chopped dried fruit, or use fresh fruit like bananas or berries. Sometimes I sprinkle a little cinnamon instead of brown sugar (if my morning blood sugar was high). It's way more satisfying than a bagel or a bowl of cold cereal, and it doesn't drive my blood sugar sky high the way those things do.

I'm accepting that job, by the way. I took a sick day from work today to just sit with the decision and try to calm down, and I think it really helped. I ate breakfast in my new special spot by a wall in the sun, and read my book, and took several different naps, and ate a yummy lunch salad with olives and goat cheese (maybe I'll write that one up tomorrow), and thought about how I see myself, and my work, and my place in this community ... and I realized that even though I'm still nervous and scared, and will probably wake up in another cold sweat tomorrow, it makes sense to do this and I am going to do it.