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Oatmeal, Upside Down, originally uploaded by ReidCarlberg.

In case you’ve been wondering about recent innovations in oatmeal, I’d like to present Upside Down Oatmeal. The idea is to put a bunch of fruit on the bottom and then the hot oatmeal on top. The oatmeal ends up cooking the fruit. So tasty.

Where does this innovation come from? Well, if you head to the Parc55 in San Francisco, their restaurant has a Creme Brulee Oatmeal that is pretty darn tasty. The main difference is that all of the fruit is on the bottom here where the Parc55 is all mixed in.

Anyway, tasty stuff.

Blame this post on @BColmer. And my over abundant enthusiasm for oatmeal.

This question came up at work today:

If you’re going to eat oatmeal, is there a significant qualitative different between the $3 oatmeal you get at The Green Monster and the $16 oatmeal you get a someplace like Luce?

It’s a fair question. Let’s look at some pictures and see.

First, $3 oatmeal from Starbucks (courtesy of @ramarnat):

It’s not bad, but I have to admit it’s been inconsistent.  I **really** like the nuts they include.  A nice touch.

Now let’s go to the $16 oatmeal from Luce:

I think it’s clear there’s a difference.  The Luce oatmeal definitely looks better and I can tell you for fact it tastes better.  And it’s not just a reflection of the bowl or the flower — the oatmeal is better, the berries are fresh — it’s awesome.

But is there a middle ground?  I think so.  Consider if you will the middle ground of making good steel cut oatmeal at home.  If you don’t buy the Whole Foods McCann’s Irish Oats tin at Whole Foods for $7.99 (incidentally, the exact same tin can be bought at Trader Joe’s for $4.99) and you have 15 minutes you can make some damn good oatmeal at home.

Yeah — that’s Trader Joe’s quick cook steel cut oatmeal, dark brown sugar and apples.  Total cost would have been about $1.  Do I have any more pictures?  Why funny you should ask — of course I do!

The astute among you may have noticed that the last picture — that’s not TJ’s quick cook — that’s McCann’s Quick Cook.  I know — I should have warned you.

What about instant at home?  When I only have 4 minutes, and not 15 (or, like right now, I’m out of the quick cook), I like Kirkland Signature Organic Instant myself.  You can nuke some frozen berries and pile them on and BOY OH BOY are they good.

Do I have a picture of that…. surprisingly, no, I don’t.

My verdict: yes, there is a difference between $3 oatmeal and $16 oatmeal. However, in general, my strong preference is to eat the oatmeal I prepare myself at home.

The end.

Oatmeal Update: apple & brown sugar., originally uploaded by ReidCarlberg.

Why no cinnamon? Just don’t happen to have any in the house right now.

What have I been up to? I’ve been eating oatmeal.

I’ve had quite a bit of the Starbucks’ Perfect Oatmeal.  I wish I liked it more than I do.  At its best it’s passable.  But sometimes its watery, sometimes lukewarm.  Sometimes it comes with the nuts, sometimes not.  The price is decent, and I’m not morally opposed to instant oatmeal, but overall it seems like a pretty high risk affair.  Full disclosure: I still own some SBUX which may be coloring my experience.

I ate at the same diner in San Francisco, Cafe Mason, quite a bit late last month.  I would be eating there still if they produced their best on a consistent basis.  Instead, each breakfast was something of an adventure.  Will they have brown sugar?  Will the oatmeal be too watery?  Passable.

A couple of weeks ago I bought some McCann’s Fast Cooking Irish Oatmeal at WFMI.  So freaking good.  That’s it above.  You can see I’ve added some berries and brown sugar to it.  Fantastic.  Yes the berries were frozen and then thawed.  Like I said: I’m not opposed to instant.

But the absolute best oatmeal ever was the week before last.  I hotwired the Intercontinental on Howard.  One morning was insanely busy so I ordered room service, which is apparently cooked up by the staff of Luce their in house restaurant.  Let me tell you, if you have $25.02 to spend on breakfast, and you happen to already be staying at this place, I would recommend it.  Beautifully cooked, incredible fresh berries on top, perfect condiments — this list goes on.  That was some good oatmeal.  And although I’ve been referring to it at the $25 oatmeal, I should point out that it included some fantastic coffee and standard issue room service charges.  My only regret on this is that the second time I tried to order it — at 4a before heading to the airport — it wasn’t ready.  They couldn’t send it.

Two other entrants.  The Blue Mermaid’s oatmeal was average although it included currants which are a plus.  Maxwell’s was decent both times – currants, raisins, brown sugar — very decent.

So that’s where I am.  I’m looking for suggestions if you have any.

I’ve been more active over on the work blog this last week than I have been here.  In case you’re interested:

* Cloud Converter, an open source toolkit I created for migrating objects from dirt bound databases to the Salesforce.com cloud, has a bunch of new features.

* I shared some Salesforce.com Metadata Lessons Learned based on my experience working with them.

* I posted a Salesforce.com Upsert Code Sample that I hope other people find useful.

* I picked my Top Five and a Half Amazon Web Services / AWS Factoids based on a couple of days spent on it.

Finally, I’m back on Twitter and have been announcing these as I go.

That’s about it.  Back to blogging about oatmeal, dogs & Christmas lights.

• urgent update: just burned some instant oatmeal. weekend bbq may not be a good idea. #
• Critter sleeping. Tomatoes now protected by anti-varmit fence. Also watered. I’m exercised. Dogs are walked. Mac backing up. Now what? #