Gooey Chocolate Goodness
2:42 p.m. - 2009-01-23


Another gloomy rainy day. I took the great J to the doctor today for a cat scan, and he wanted me to go in with him to the waiting room. Unfortunately, the TV in the room was set to CSpan, some meeting about congressional ethics (as if they had any). I find this sort of stuff amazing in that it can bore you to death and raise your blood pressure at the same time. I asked the reception nurse if she had the remote to change the channel, but no dice. I reached up and turned it off, for which the other man waiting there thanked me profusely. Nothing like insincere congressional blather to make your doctor visit enjoyable.

After that, which only, astoundingly, took an hour, I came home and puttered around. Melissa is anxiously waiting for a package to be delivered here from KnitPicks, but so far, no package. I decided to knit on the brown sock, so I finished watching The Castle In The Sky and am now watching Kiki's Delivery Service. I think Kiki is my second favorite Miyazaki movie so far. Anyhow, during this time, Melissa called to say that she had gotten an email from January saying that she and her spouse were sick and unable to attend the birthday party (her own) tomorrow. You can't go near Jason if you have any kind of respiratory problem, so the birthday will have to be postponed. I wondered if Jason knew, since he doesn't read his email on a timely basis and was going to go out food shopping for the party as soon as the effects of his doctor visit wore off. I called him and let him know, so he was going to call the Januarys and see what the story was.

I did try to make a chocolate oatmeal cake, and it was a super success the first time out. I cooked up my usual batch of oatmeal (1 cup oatmeal to 2 plus cups of water). I was wondering whether adding lots of cocoa to a batter would be like adding more flour, so that you would have to cut down the amount of flour, so I looked it up online, and lo, you do have to reduce the flour. One of the cocoa tips was to put it in boiling water to get better chocolate flavor, so I added it to the cooked oatmeal at the end of the cooking with a bit of extra water. Then I put it in the food processor with most of the ingredients and processed it. I poured it into a bowl and added the eggs and chocolate chips, stirred it up, put it in the pan, and put more chips and nuts on the top. It really baked up into a moist scrumptious cake. Next time I am going to add some vanilla to it and maybe a pinch more salt. You absolutely cannot tell it is a wholegrain cake, it tastes so good.

I think I am going to experiment with more variations on the oatmeal cake, especially one with dried apricots in it.

Now I am tired, since I got up at the crack of dawn and tore out of the house to get J to the doctor, so I think a nap is in the cards, or maybe some more Miyazaki.