FeedMe

Oatmeal

The oatmeal most Americans know is hearty and nutritious — but unnecessarily pasty and bland. We can do better.

Common supermarket oatmeal is made from "rolled oats." Oat grains are rolled between big rollers to flatten the grains. Advantage: It cooks in minutes. Disadvantage: It's mush. Scottish and Irish oats are "steel cut" oats. The grains are chopped into pieces by steel blades. When cooked, they retain their texture and offer a nice, nutty bite.

Steel-cut (Irish or Scottish) oats, on the left; rolled oats on the right. Click for closer look.

Steel-cut oats used to be hard to find but have become much more common. Even the venerable Quaker brand now comes in a steel-cut variety. McCann's is the classic Irish brand. Avoid any instant or fast-cooking variety — they just don't have the same toothsome texture. You can also find them in the bulk grain bins, where they are a real bargain. Even at the pricey Whole Foods, bulk oatmeal costs a third of what the packaged brands charge.

They're easy to cook: One cup of oats to four cups of water and a pinch of salt, simmered uncovered for about 20 minutes. Or a cup of oats and three cups of water, simmered for 20 minutes with a cover.

A batch this size makes two to three servings for me. I usually make it on Sundays, refrigerate the leftovers, and have it on two additional days during the week.

 

Simmering is simple but I usually add a step, which I originally learned from Alton Brown. A light toasting in a very small amount of butter gives it a very satifying roasted grain taste. It uses the same pot, so there's no additional cleanup.

Toasty Oatmeal

Cook a cup of oats with 1/2 - 1 tablespoon of butter in a heavy saucepan over medium heat, stirring often, until the grain browns slightly and smells toasty. Let it cool for a couple of minutes and add four cups of water and a pinch of salt. (If you don't let it cool, the water will boil wildly when it hits the pan and splatter.) Simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes until it's the consistency you like.

Makes enough for 2 large or 4 small servings.

I like it with brown sugar and milk and sometimes cinnamon or fruit.

Bringing Roomba Back to Life!

The thing I love most about the Internet is the availability of information too specialized to be available any other way.

My Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner died. Unfortunately, that's not uncommon -- they have not been terribly reliable (so much so that the company now boasts of increased reliability for their new models). I replaced the battery and gave it a thorough cleaning (is it ironic that one must vacuum out one's vacuum cleaner?) but it continued to crawl around in pathetic lurches, refusing to cover more than a few feet of floor. I was resigned to sending it in for service when I stumbled across RoombaHelp,  a web page that describes how to resolve a syndrome they call the "circle dance."

Each of the two drive wheels an optical tachometer – a slotted wheel interrupts a light beam, which tells the controller that the wheel is turning. If the light sensor gets dusty, the controller thinks the wheel isn't turning. This assembly is located in the wheel hubs. You would pretty much need to know it's there.

Getting to the secret tachometer is not easy — it involves the removal of over 20 screws and a few tricky pieces. Fortunately, the instructions are excellent and my Roomba is working again.

A few suggestions:

• If you have to do this, it helps if you think tinkering with complex appliances is fun.
• Mind your screws! There are four different types. I numbered the cells in an ice cube tray and put each set of screws in a separate cell. I wrote matching numbers on the diagram on the mysteryblogs website.
• If you lose a screw — well, don't. They're not standard. But you can force a similar-sized sheet metal screw and probably get by.
• The instructions have you remove a fender to gain access to the wheel but my Roomba has no removable fenders. So I had to remove the wheel. Two screws hold it in. Once loose you have to twist the wheel assembly in a non-obvious way so the motor clears and can come through the opening to drop out of the unit. Not easy to describe and takes some fiddling to figure out. Then you can open the wheel, blow out the dust, and reassemble.
• One message I found suggests drilling holes in the wheel covers to allow a compressed air blast over the opto sensor without disassembly. Good idea — I will probably do that if this recurs.

Credit: Photo is from the RoombaHelp, Quietwest Photo

More on the CircleDance and pictures are in a RoombaReview discussion thread.

Buy Tires Online?

Of all the products one might buy online, tires did not seem likely. They need to be installed. They're big and heavy. I imagine them being shipped to stores by the truckload, not four at a time. People rely on the advice of the seller. Since you're stuck with the results of a tire purchase for a couple of years — and returning them is a problem — can an online retailer provide enough service?

I heard good things about the Tire Rack, the leading online seller of tires and a friend just reported an excellent experience. So I decided to give them a spin, so to speak.

I visited a local tire seller that is very near work. I have used them before. I read Consumer Reports. I checked Costco. I found a message board for Lexus owners and read the numerous threads on tires (including many messages about what tires people like on my exact model of car).

Ultimately, I bought at the Tire Rack. Here's why:

Information: Online wins, hands-down.

The Lexus drivers' bulletin board was an excellent start. It helped me narrow my choices to a few very well-liked models. Consumer Reports was helpful but did not include the Lexus users' preference, the Bridgestone Alenza.  The Tire Rack's site was full of really good information. Their advisor pages let you describe your car, how you drive, your priorities (noise/comfort, performance, mileage). You can select by brand, size, and other characteristics.

Recommendations: Online wins, hands-down.

The Tire Rack's crown jewel is their customer ratings. They have accumulated comments from literally millions of customer miles. Many of their customers write detailed reviews. They detail the choices in comprehensive charts like this one:

(Click image for full size)

This showed me that the Alenza, which the Lexus board owners preferred, was very close to Consumer Reports' top choice, The Goodyear Fortera Triple Tred. I went with the Alenza for $30 less per tire.

The local dealer I talked to was not even close. He recommended a tire that scored fairly poorly elsewhere. Other dealers would probably have done better but how can I assess their advice? In this case, the community's recommendations were reliable and mostly in agreement.

Price: Tire Rack wins, hands-down.

Even Costco could not compete. They were close, for the Michelins they carry, but their selection is very, very limited.

My dealer? Distant loser. Charged me more than the Tire Rack for a lower grade tire. From reading online, dealers vary widely and I could have done better — but shopping for tires is only marginally more interesting to me than being run over by one.

There is no sales tax and with shipping, the Rack wins easily. Installation is $125. The only downside is I will have to pay for tire rotations over the life of the tires. 

Service: Local retailers win, but not by much.

I expected local dealers to win this category since they have the tires in stock and can install them for you. Their advantage was narrower than I thought.

When you buy from the Tire Rack, they identify local shops that will install them. One of them happens to be the auto repair place I always use (Don and John's Automotive in Sunnyvale, CA). I trust them completely, so that was a big plus for the Tire Rack.

The Tire Rack ships the tires directly to the installer.

In one business day.

For $45.

Local dealers, of course, will sell and install the day you buy and generally include free rotation and inspections but add it up and the Rack stills wins, for me.

Bottom Line: The Tire Rack rocks.