Oatmeal

Dear Polly: When I cook oatmeal in my microwave, I get a different texture than when I cook it on the stove. It's smoother and creamier. Frankly, I prefer the stove-top texture. Is there any way to get microwave-cooked oatmeal to come out less creamy, with more texture? - K.R.W. Dear K.R.W.: I expect you're mixing the cold water with the uncooked oatmeal then cooking it in the microwave. This is the general microwave method for cooking cereals, and it does produce a creamy-textured oatmeal.

Dear Polly: Some years ago, you printed a formula for a yogurt and oatmeal facial mask that was super for deep-cleaning your skin. I've mislaid the formula and was wondering if you could print it again. - Ruth Dear Ruth: Just in time to freshen your skin for that big New Year's Eve party, here's a great formula for sloughing off dead cells and tightening pores. Mix together 1 cup plain yogurt, 2 tablespoons honey and 1/2 cup instant or quick-cooking oatmeal. Spread this mixture on your face and relax for 15 minutes.

I am writing this as the Urban Gardening Program staff and gardeners all over East Philly are getting ready for the 10th Anniversary Garden Tour. Nearly 100 people eating and peering their way through the eastern reaches of North Philadelphia - if it doesn't rain. Weeders are weeding. Cooks are cooking. Tour guides are practicing pushing people - politely - on and off buses. I've just finished my part of the cooking: a sweet bread for breakfast break on Hope Street with Walter Ney and his neighbors.

OK, campers, how many of us ate carrot sticks instead of holiday cookies? How many drank a big glass of water before each festive meal? How many at the parties stuck to pretzels and unbuttered popcorn instead of pigging out on pate and toasted pecans? Oh well, at least there's no need to feel alone. Along with death and taxes, the New Year's Diet is a universal constant. So, of course, is trying to keep fiber up and fat down for the sake of health as well as slimness.

If cooking guru Graham Kerr could offer you just one word, it would be "oatmeal. " In longer form, it would be: Eat something more substantial than coffee and a doughnut or bagel for breakfast. Kerr says that if you ate what he eats for breakfast every day, you'd be healthier, weigh less and have more energy all day long. And besides all that, it's delicious, he swears. Here are his directions for Breakfast a la Kerr: "Before going to bed at night, put a saucepan on the stove, put 3/4 cup of old-fashioned oatmeal - not the microwaveable kind" into it. Sprinkle in raisins and dried cranberries.

Regional American specialties are "in" in "in" gastronomic circles around the country. "Blackened Redfish," for example, is all the rage, and done the way Paul Prudhomme does it, it's delicious. But there is a very significant difference between "blackened" and "burnt" that chefs outside New Orleans' French Quarter seem to have trouble with. Another food unique to a particular part of the U.S. is "goetta. " Goetta is a German specialty found in southwest Ohio, northwest Kentucky and southeastern Indiana, the greater Cincinnati area.

Your mother might have told you: "Finish your spinach; it's good for you. " Or, you might have learned in school that British sailors acquired the nickname "Limeys" after it was discovered that having them drink lime juice could prevent scurvy. But until very recently, most Americans never thought of their food as medicine. "We built a wall, saying this side is drugs, this side is food," says food industry expert Nancy Childs. Now that wall has started to crumble, says Childs, a professor at St. Joseph's University who edits a national journal about "neutraceuticals.

Whether they're pro or (more likely) con, most people outside of rural Scotland do not spend much time thinking about haggis. Then, once a year, it's Robert Burns' birthday, "Burns Day," Jan. 25. In honor of the occasion, classicists on every side invite us to contemplate, at least in imagination, the spectacle of several kilt-clad grown men peculiarly engaged. They are ceremonially playing bagpipe anthems and addressing bombastic toasts to a rather stodgy sausage, namely the haggis.

As recently as last year, even people who liked oatmeal - a distinct breakfast-table minority - rarely asked for its near-cousin, oat bran. Just trying to find a store that stocked the bland cereal was often a challenge. Today, thanks to a couple of medical treatises, a diet book and media coverage, everybody wants oat bran. So much so, in fact, that just trying to find a store that has oat bran in stock is often a challenge. "Overnight, (sales) increased 35-fold. I just couldn't get enough of it," said Frank Puleo, who buys cereals and other products for Genuardi's supermarkets.

Dear Polly: Here's an idea for a great stocking stuffer. Save empty toilet- paper rolls, and cut Christmas wrapping paper about an inch or two longer than each roll. Glue the paper to the roll. Put candy inside of it and tie each end shut with a ribbon. You can put a name tag on, if you wish. - Denise Dear Denise: Although Christmas is many months away, I wanted to pass along your pointer because these also make great birthday party favors. Small trinkets as well as candy can be stuffed into the cardboard tubes.

Like so many Yiddish words, schmaltz has mixed connotations - it can be used to describe something fine and expensive or something corny and over-the-top sentimental. But for many cooks, its true meaning lies on the palate. "If you don't use schmaltz, your food will be flavorless," says Russ Farer, general manager at Schlesinger's Deli in Center City. "It's that simple. " Schmaltz, of course, is the rendered fat of chicken (or goose) that European Jews adopted for kosher cookery in place of butter when tallow from beef proved prohibitively expensive.

Makes about 18 cookies 3/4 cup schmaltz, well chilled or frozen 1/2 cup granulated sugar 1/2 cup packed brown sugar 1 large egg 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract 1½ teaspoons cinnamon 1 teaspoon kosher salt 11/2 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 2 cups old-fashioned oats (not quick-cooking) 2/3 cup dried cherries 1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. 2. Cut the schmaltz into chunks and put it, along with both sugars, into the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with a paddle.

Makes 6 to 8 servings For the dough: 2½ cups all-purpose    flour 2 tablespoons sugar 1 teaspoon salt 10 tablespoons unsalted    butter, cut into             1/4-inch pieces and          chilled 6 tablespoons vegetable shortening, cut in 1/2-inch pieces and chilled 8-10 tablespoons ice          water For the filling: 1/3 cup sugar 1 tablespoon cornstarch...

The posters for "Blue Valentine" describe the movie as "a love story," and in case you haven't heard, that's a very bitter irony. The love story depicted in the widely lauded "Blue Valentine" is the kind that often ends up on "Dateline," with one spouse missing and the other being interviewed in an orange jumpsuit. Which is to say, fraught. With anger, recrimination and a bitter reconsideration of love itself - it isn't an illusion, it certainly has a very short shelf-life, while the misery it leaves behind lasts forever.

Here's some of the stuff you're likely to find during a visit to Scotland. Haggis: Scottish dish tastes and looks like dark meat oatmeal. It's actually not as bad as, say, blood pudding. Secret of its delicious taste? Sheep guts (heart, liver, lung). Scottish money: It's the same pound sterling denomination as in England, but it's printed with different pictures. Scottish brogue: Not hard to understand unless you're talking to footballers or find yourself in Glasgow.

Perhaps it is the packaging, John McCann's steel-cut Irish Oatmeal, unrepentently retro in that black-and-white, bemedaled tuxedo of a tin, as sturdy - and weighty - as a quart of old-time wood putty. Philosophically, of course, it presents a dilemma: The carbon footprint of hauling oats a few thousand food miles from green County Kildare cannot, one assumes, be very dainty. But then again, there is so much that can (and shortly will) be said in its favor, not only nutritionally, for sure, but the fact that no animals were harmed in its testing or manufacture: These oats are as whole-food and wholesome as a tinned whole food can be. They are more costly, no question, than Quaker Oats, my childhood stalwart.

Remember the Chipwich craze? Back in the '80s, folks couldn't get enough of the ice cream sandwich that packed a giant scoop of vanilla between two doughy chocolate chip cookies. These days, people still grab Chipwiches from freezer cases. But baker Roz Bratt, who owns a cozy 5th Street pastry shop called Homemade Goodies, thinks a couple of her buttery oatmeal raisin cookies would make a great homemade alternative to the familiar treat. Roz says vanilla ice cream tastes great with her cookies, but you might want to try raspberry sherbet or rum raisin.

On the night before it blooms, I feel like I have swallowed a tennis ball. I yearn for mashed potatoes, but feel too achy to make them. I sleep fitfully, and dream weird dreams. By the next morning, my head hurts, my voice sounds alien, and my eyes burn. I am about to star in my own version of The Killer Cold. I descend the stairs wishing I were 6 years old again, with my mother waiting for me in the kitchen, ready to spoil me with hugs and hot oatmeal. Instead, as I stagger over to boil water for tea I am reminded that the back burner is busted, that there is no bread to toast and spread with jelly (always an indulgence on sick days)

As this blue-green ball we reside on completes yet another orbit around the sun, it is a logical time for reflection. I'll take you on a trip - a quick peek at the past 12 months. If you ever wondered what a desert was like, last summer was for you. Notable for brown lawns, dying shrubs and "John Bolaris held hostage," the drought of 1999 proved that no matter how serious the catastrophe, TV news could bore you with it inside of a week. After the pain of a Senate impeachment trial, Arlen Specter helped our scandal-weary country come to terms with the acquittal of President Clinton with his "Single Stain Theory.

Amazon Juice on the move Not even a year old, Amazon Juice, 103 S. 18th St., is branching out. The lease is already signed for a second location at 19th and Market streets, and co-owners Alan and Larry Kabinoff hope to open two others - one at Penn and another in the Jefferson Hospital area around 11th and Walnut streets - by June. "We want to dominate the Philadelphia market and capture the good locations," said Alan. Brother Larry, an optometrist, founded Philadelphia Vision Centers with about 20 locations in the Philly area before HMOs drastically cut eyeglass reimbursements.