Oatmeal: It’s explosive.
1) Carefully read instructions on oatmeal packet. This time you will do it right. For once, breakfast won’t end in messy defeat.
2) Stir together milk and oatmeal.
3) Set microwave according to directions. Hide pre-victory grin. Whistle. Exude confidence.
4) Watch oatmeal spin on tray, ready to halt all cooking at first sign of boilage. Squint a little. Hold breath. Fear overflow, despite yourself.
5) Stir and check status. (Answer: Oat flakes drifting in warmish milk soup.)
6) Another minute in microwave.
7) Still floaty dry oats + milk. This could take a while.
8) Set microwave for one more minute. It’s still raw, and barely lukewarm. You’re totally safe.
9) Go set table. Take your time. Swagger a little.
10) Saunter back to microwave, spoon in hand, poised to stir.
11) Open microwave door. Discover that, in your absence, your impending meal became an oatmeal volcano, spouting thick, gloppy, magma-esque mess all over clean microwave tray.
12) Congratulations! Your oatmeal is hot and (mostly) cooked. So is the tray beneath. Blow on breakfast. Wait for it to cool so you can finally eat it.
13) Clean-up time. Soak bowl for sixteen hours. Chisel cemented cereal off bottom of microwave. Try not to swear.
14) Vow to use water instead of milk next time, though tasteless paste isn’t your preferred dining choice.
15) Scribble “Buy bigger bowl” on shopping list. Amend to “Much, much bigger.” Underline. Add exclamation point.
16) Or there’s always toast. Toast is safe. Usually.
Your turn – what’s something you repeatedly attempt, even though you know it will lead to your ultimate doom? Talk an elderly relative through way-too-techy computer issues? Jump into NaNoWriMo with the threat of Thanksgiving (and all those pies you have to bake) hanging over your head? Make coffee in that complicated machine in the break room? Sew pants? Come on! Make me feel better. Spill it. (Yeah. Spill. You and my oatmeal…)
OMG! I have done this same thing SO MANY TIMES! I laughed out loud at #13 – absolutely true.
My personal bugaboo is pie crust. Can. NOT. Make. It. I’ve probably thrown out a hundred pounds of floury paste trying. Now I buy pre-made ones.
Homemade pie crust terrifies me! I’m impressed that you even tried it. That takes guts.
P.S. = I didn’t succeed in the trying not to swear part. Sigh.
LOL! Yeah, I don’t always succeed, either. That’s why I added the “Try” at the beginning. 😀
It’s a good thing I don’t like oatmeal because it sounds like something I wouldn’t remotely be able to accomplish accurately. I can’t flip a pancake to save my life so I don’t make them!
Flipping pancakes is one of my weaknesses, too! Though I still make them because, well, they’re delicious. Even the messed-up, crumpled ones. As for the oatmeal, I don’t eat it often, but my daughter loves it so I find myself making it a lot more than I used to. Which, of course, means a greater likelihood of disaster.
Haha! Oh dear. I’m sure it wasn’t fun in the moment, but this blog post definitely made me chuckle.
I’ve been having trouble lately with loaves of bread in the oven. I made one kind (chocolate zucchini) that turned out great! Then I tried regular zucchini. No. Banana? No. The insides don’t cook and the outsides burn and I have NO IDEA what I’m doing wrong! (Anyone know anything about cooking?) So now I just either cook muffins or use an 8×8 pan instead of a loaf pan. Cooks fine, but, I like my slices of bread. Le sigh.
I’m glad it made you chuckle. I figure it’s always more fun to laugh at disasters than cry about them, right?
Good luck with your loaves. The only thing I can think of is that maybe something is off in your oven and it’s heating up more than it’s supposed to. You could get an oven thermometer to see. Either way, maybe if you turn the heat down some? Good luck. Sounds frustrating.
I love the “soak it for 16 hours part.” Sometimes that’s still not enough.
Tell me about it! Especially those parts around the edges that get all caked on. They might as well be part of the bowl forevermore.
That photo made me laugh so much.
I would probably destroy many things if i had a microwave. But, hm? What do I cringe at doing, and basically su*# at?
Cooking!
Though I love cooking, I manage to set off the smoke alarm, every night. I’ve learned to take it out, but must make sure to replace it. O.O fun post.
Ha! Yes, I’ve been known to set off the smoke alarm way too often. We actually had to remove the smoke detector in our hall at one point because I could start the oven without the alarm going off. How great, though, that you love cooking and continue to do it despite any issues!
Been there with the oatmeal. Oat bran cereal is worse in the microwave(but strangely delicious) – there’s no bowl big enough.
Oat bran cereal sounds wonderful! I haven’t tried anything like that in the microwave, but I do have an 8-grain cereal I make on the stove. Your comment about there not being a bowl big enough cracked me up, too. That’s exactly how I feel about oatmeal!
Loved this photo! 🙂 I tried to microwave my Starbucks once, which SHOULD be fairly easy. But I left the cup in there too long and it melted all over the microwave. I’m not very good at baking but ever so often I get this indescribable urge to bake something very, very difficult. Like, instead of just making cookies … I’ll try to find some fancy-shmancy cake and do it all from scratch. And it’s just a huge, horrible mess. It doesn’t taste bad, ever. But it looks … not so pretty. 🙂 N
Oh, no! That sounds like a huge mess! And I know what you mean about attempting to bake way-too-complicated stuff. I blame pretty cookbooks and Pinterest for encouraging such things. 😀
exploded oatmeal is the worst. But since my daughter and I eat it every single day for breakfast, we’ve finally worked out most of the kinks. And we use water.
Water would be a big help, but it just tastes so much better with milk. I really need to master it, though, since my daughter loves it. It makes a great breakfast — something you can clearly attest to!
We don’t use packets – just water with oatmeal, and then milk afterwards to cool.
I don’t know that I’ve mastered it, though. Everyone else in the family thinks my obsession with oatmeal is over the top. And boring. But it’s so cheap and easy.
I’m just as obsessed with my almost-nightly Cream of Wheat, so I understand. I have it down to a science. We do oatmeal packets, or plain oatmeal with raisins. You can also cook steel cut oats in a crock pot overnight. Those don’t boil over, and they’re delicious. So nice to wake up to in the morning, and very hearty!
Your post made me laugh so hard, I’d have snorted oatmeal up my nose if I’d had any. As it was, mine had just exploded in the microwave. 😉
Sadly, I continually engage in people-pleasing behavior with folks I KNOW can’t be pleased. This may not only lead to my doom, but to the end of civilization as we know it.
So please send a few oatmeal packets my way in preparation for the apocalypse. Thanks.
Ugh. I know that behavior, I do it too much, and I completely sympathize. Though perhaps it calls for something stronger than oatmeal. May I suggest Cream of Wheat? 🙂