Oatmeal
Learn to cook
When the world ends you will not be able to stroll across the quad to pick up a bowl of freshly prepared oatmeal at the Student Union. Indeed, the Student Union will be selling blue books and not much else. Learn now to prepare your own personal foodstuffs before it's too late. All you need is oatmeal and water and utensils and a pot and a heat source and this handy recipe. We're here to help.
Ingredients
- Dehydrated Oatmeal, may contain raisins, spices, olives, apple bits, blueberries, blackberries, cranberries, apples,etc.
- Raw water, get it from a bottle or from the refrigerator. It's important.
- Bowl, holds the cooked oatmeal
- Spoon, stirs the oatmeal and also fits into you rmouth
- Pot, holds the boiling the water before it boils and as it boils
- Napkin, paper or cloth, cleans your mouth as you eat
- Open oatmeal package. This may require scissors or a Swiss Army Knife or your teeth. You probably will not need all three, but you should have your teeth with you at all times anyway. Scissors are less likely to hurt yourself if you use them wrongly. You may stab yourself with the knife if you are excessively hungry.
- Pour oatmeal into bowl. Enhance this procedure through the judicious application of natural gravity: locate the bowl directly underneath the oatmeal package. Tip the package slightly while jiggling it even less slightly. Listen closely for shards of dehydrated oatmeal beginning to slide down through the bag. This audio cue tells you that shortly you will actually see the food product begin to cascade into the bowl. It it's a really big bag of oatmeal, don't dump all of it into the bowl. Just pour in the amount that you think you might be willing to eat.
- Boil water. Select your boiling method of choice in advance of this step. Do not be caught with a bowl of poured oatmeal but without proper accoutrement for preparing boiled water. A microwave oven, a stove top (gas or electric), and a campfire all provide sufficient amounts of thermal calories.
- Combine boiling water and raw oatmeal in the bowl. Carefully pour the water in and around the oatmeal, being careful to not slosh any water or oats onto the counter. As before in the previous pouring step, use gravity to enhance the smoothness of this step.
- Stir the water into the oatmeal. Basic physics and chemistry will perform this step for you if you are willing to watch an episode of Oprah while it happens. Your stirring significantly decreases the time required to reach thermal and aquatic equilibrium. Water and oatmeal will merge into a semi-liquid mass that looks almost but not quite completely unlike oatmeal. It will be soupy if you put in too much water. It will be a brick if you put in too little water.
- Carefully test the mixture for extreme hotness. Significant mouthal damage may happen to you if you ignore this step.
- After verifying proper temperature of the mixture, serve to yourself and consume. Don't deprive yourself.
- Clean up your bowls and utensils shortly after completing your meal. Oatmeal sets up like cement when it dries.