Midwest Memo
Other ways
by Alan Shultz

After years of avoiding breakfast in general, and oatmeal specifically, I have fallen head over taste buds in love with Quaker Oats. I'm talking instant oatmeal here, pre-measured packets requiring 1/2 cup milk and two short minutes in the microwave. Stirring is not required - imagine that! And it's perfect every time.

I add nothing to my oatmeal, no milk on top, no crunchy extras for texture, nothing, that is, except for a bit of brown sugar stirred into the very hot, steaming middle to sweeten things up.

Here in Carroll County out on the farm we have a stock of brown sugar. It plays a supporting role in regular recipes from baked beans to coffee cake. This, however, is not so in our city place where baking anything but a frozen pizza is a rare occurrence. When I first introduced oatmeal to my breakfast menu it was in the city. I had to really hunt down the brown sugar. After plenty of looking I found it in the refrigerator. It was hidden behind the ketchup inside a glass storage container. There, in the back row between the mustard and barbeque sauce, the brown sugar had fused itself into a solid block and proceeded to lose most of its color. We speculate that the block of sugar is about eight years old, dating back to our purchase of the apartment.

My wife assures me that sugar does not go "bad." My taste buds concur.

So, for months I've been hacking away at the brown sugar, using my two minutes microwave time each day to scrape, chip and hammer off a bit of sugar from the pale brown brick.

One morning while observing my sugar ritual my wife offered: "there is another way."

She proceed to place a piece of white bread inside the sugar container and sealed it back up. Then, all she said was, "wait until tomorrow."

The next day there was no chipping, no hacking, no hammering. The brown sugar was soft and spoonable - an overnight transformation! For the most part even the sugar's color had returned. This after two years short of a decade! And I have to say that with no scraping or chipping required, well, my morning portion of sweet brown sugar increased generously.

So often there are alternatives, other ways to do something, but I just don't know about them or haven't considered them.

Sometimes I need to simply ask.

The brown sugar got me to thinking about the year ahead. A resolution, or at least a theme, came into focus.

I'm going to try to be open to other ways of doing things. I intend to ask about options,

query alternatives. Instead of

always chipping and scraping for my own answers, I'm going to seek out from others - the other ways.

And about that bread...

Even though I don't know how the bread does it, the fact is that the leavened bread left with the brick hard sugar did something wonderful. The bread restored the sugar, it took away its hardness.

Leavened bread is full of symbolism in the Bible, in family life, at the hearth and at the table. Sustenance, hospitality, life, sharing, nurturing, these qualities all are found in simple leavened bread.

Perhaps a lesson is there for the taking. Sometimes we are the sugar, grown hard and away from our true selves. And sometimes others comfort us, help us, restore our softness and receptivity.

And likewise, sometimes we must serve others as the leavened bread and help take from others, simply by our presence, the hardness.

A metaphor for the new year.

How sweet it is. How sweet, indeed, it can be.

Happy New Year to our readers and wishes for a joyful 2008.