With Apologies to My Male Readership...

Last September I had the good fortune to sit next to a woman named Nancy Aronie at an animal communication workshop I was attending. I say good fortune because Nancy is an absolutely fabulous woman. She's a wonderful writer and gives a very famous workshop on the Vineyard called Writing from the Heart.  Everyone at the workshop we were attending had to go around the room and introduce themselves and Nancy laughed deeply and wept openly in the same sentence. She is brilliant, and brimming over with life, and, lucky for me, she is freezing all the time.

Lucky for me, because the other reason I was so fortunate to be sitting next to Nancy was that she brought a hot water bottle with her to the workshop. Turns out she takes it everywhere she goes to keep her warm. During a break in the morning session Nancy refilled her water bottle from the tea kettle. At first I thought the whole thing was kind of bizarre, but when she stuck it in between us I was instantly converted. "You'll have to get one," Nancy said. To which I replied,  "Nancy, I am 38-years-old. I cannot start carrying a hot water bottle around with me." 

Which turned out to be totally untrue. Even as I write this I have my trusty hot water bottle by my side, keeping me toasty. Oh, I don't carry it around with me. Not out of the house anyway. Unless I'm going up to Patrick's parent's house across the street. Or for a long car ride. Or to the movies. Not that we ever go to the movies, but if we did, I'd take my hot water bottle with me.

The only problem with the hot water bottle is that I can't take it with me when I'm doing chores outside cause you have to hold it. I actually considered getting one of those baby slings to hold it in place against my chest while I'm feeding or working the livestock but it seemed kind of impractical.

The thing is, I am cold all the time. Well, not all the time. I'm warmish from May through September. But winters in the Northeast kick my ass. I hate being cold, and as a result, I dread doing all of the everyday tasks that I so enjoy doing when it's warm.

And, if I may be frank with you, (and I think I can speak frankly with you) the worst thing in the world is when my breasts get cold. It's beyond uncomfortable- it's painful. And, short of taking a hot shower, I find it very, very difficult to recover from cold breasts.

Until today that is. Today, I came up with the idea for which I will become famous. Forget the whole "started the first Fiber CSA" business. If and when my obit appears in the New York Times, it will be because of the discovery I made at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, January 4th.

And it never would have occurred to me to share this particular piece of awesome if Patrick, upon hearing the news of my miraculous invention, hadn't groaned and said "I can't wait the hear what the blog readers think of this!" That's when I realized it would be wrong for me to keep this discovery to myself. As wrong as wrong can be.

I was getting ready to go out and work sheep and goats with Patrick and Erin this afternoon. "Working" livestock means trimming hooves, worming and delousing all the animals in a particular pen and it. takes. for. ever. Like hours. Outside. In the cold.  As usual, I was dragging my feet and stalling because I was already cold, and I really didn't want my boobs to get any colder or more painful. So right before I left the house, I grabbed two of those "Hot Hands" hand warmers from the kitchen drawer. You know, those little packets that you shake up to cause some kind of chemical reaction and then stick in your gloves? Only I stuck them in my bra. And it was magic, my friends.

I worked outside for two hours without getting cold. At all. I don't think it's overstating it to say that this may very well have changed my life. 

I think ya'll know me well enough to know that I don't regularly talk about my breasts in public, and I truly hope I haven't offended anyone with my immodesty, but if even one of you suffers from the distress of cold breasts and is helped by my discovery, it will all be worth it.

We happened to have bought a whole passel of hand warmers for our Solstice party, and I think they cost around $2 a dozen at Walmart. Of course it means having to step foot in Walmart- an errand I put right up there with being water boarded- but believe me my friends, it will be worth it.

Someone's been eating my porridge...

I am about to let ya'll in on a secret that will change your life. Wait, maybe I'm overselling it a bit. 

I'm going to let ya'll in on a secret that will change your weekday mornings. At least your weekday mornings breakfasts. 

Generally speaking, I am not a believer in small kitchen appliances. As far as I'm concerned everyone needs a stand mixer, food processor, immersion blender and a crock pot. A toaster is handy if you eat a lot of toast I guess. And coffee drinkers seem to think that a coffee maker is as necessary as oxygen. A hot air popcorn popper can save your life when you're home alone at dinner time and don't feel like cooking. 

But that's it really. I don't need or want an electric can opener, bread maker, hot dogger, toaster oven, electric potato peeler or anything made by Ronco. My counter top real estate is just too precious to me to waste on a bunch of silly stuff that gets used now and then and collects dust the rest of the time.

Case in point; A while back I decided that I wanted to eat more rice. Brown rice, white rice, jasmine rice, wild rice. Oh the possibilities! Now, I am perfectly capable of cooking rice in a pot of the stove but in the fantasy world in my head, I believed that an electric rice cooker would free me up to do other things while the side dish was in the works. I could paint! Take voice lessons! Compose a naughty comic opera! Anything would be possible because a rice cooker would be like a time machine, creating 40 minutes out of nowhere every evening between work and dinner.

So I went to amazon and ordered this:

And for a good week, week-and-a-half I made rice. And the rice was good. Very good. But, at the end of the day, how much rice can a person eat, you know?

The rice cooker took up residence in a little-used cupboard where it shamed me every time I reached for something behind it.

Fast forward to my trip to Texas. The first morning I was there my mom made me the most delicious oatmeal. There were all kinds of dried berries and nuts to mix in to it but I was on vacation so I put brown sugar and heavy whipping cream in mine. Ummmmmmmm. It was amazing. And she made it in her rice cooker.

As soon as I got back to New York I got the rice cooker out and discovered two little bits of awesome. First, my Neuro Fuzzy has a "porridge" setting. And secondly you can set a timer to start it anytime you want.

Before I go to bed at night I mix one cup of of McCann's Steel Cut Irish Oatmeal with 3 and 2/3 cups water (slightly less than the directions on the back of the can) and set the timer for 5:30 a.m. By the time I get up in the morning the oatmeal is done. It's. Like. Magic.

But here's the best part. Everyone loves the oatmeal, or porridge as we now call it. Even the kids. Do you have any idea how cool that is? For all five of us to agree on anything edible? Magic I tell ya!

The Neuro Fuzzy has now become a beloved member of the family. I'm even thinking of getting it a Christmas stocking.

You don't need to rush out and buy an expensive rice cooker to put the magic to work for you. My mom's is a tiny $20 job she got at Target. Just make sure it has a timer cause it's really all about the timer, you know?