The Deep End

She waltzed up to my desk and peered over. Her left eybrow arched up into a fine point as if to drive my attention to her neatly styled highlights. "You've gone off the deep end," she said.

A statement which I find myself in agreement with more and more. My behavior was to a regular person abnormal at best. Possibly insane. For the food obsessed - this probably means you - it was perfectly logical.

My regular breakfast of oatmeal which I have at work is normally uninterrupted. I unpack my things and start my computer. I make my way to the kitchen and pour some hot-as-hell water into my cereal, then go back and sit at the computer for a few minutes reading the New York Times headlines to see how the world fell apart again in the last few hours. Afterwards a peruse my regular webcomics to help me forget what I just read at the New York Times. It's a blissful and well-balanced regimen I perform every day.

This morning I overslept. The alarm was not set. After a quick transformation I was out the door and by some miracle I left the house in clothes that matched and did not make me look like a color blind lunatic trapped in the body of a hobo. It was also in my favor that bed head and not shaving were in so that I looked cool and hip like those guys that are bred in Gold's Gyms who appear in advertisements for jeans I can't afford rather than disheveled.

Still, in my morning panic to get out the door I was able to throw into a small tote bag the ingredients and tools I would need to eat my most important meal of the day.

I grabbed a small piece of Tupperware that I hate. It's permanently stained red from tomato sauce that, as much as I scrub it, won't come off leaving me to always worry that anything that goes in it will end up tasting like the jars of Prego my roommate is wont to buy. Into it I threw a giant fistful of steel cut oats where, sadly, only 3/4 of it made it into the actual Tupperware, the rest becoming a cereal confetti on my floor and counter. I cleaned the mess with rapidity and swearing so surly it could peel paint off a wall.

Next went in a pinch of palm sugar, a few fingerfuls of chopped and dried dates, pumpkin seeds and raisins. I then tossed in a slight puff of ground cinnamon to round things out. I had done this forever and reasoned that somehow that teeny dusting made me healthier in mind and body if not at least in attitude for a few hours.

It was then I saw the vanilla bean. A splinter of one to be exact. A piece of a seeded bean that had been used and reused however many times to the point that it was broken and shriveled shard of fragrance. I raised it to my nose and sniffed it.

It amazes me just how powerful a vanilla bean really is. Like a movie you know every line too from seeing it so many times, it never loses its appeal. Each time you experience it it's like seeing it for the first time and all you can do is stare wide eyed and wonder if other people know just how amazing this singular encounter really is.

Into the tote it went. Along with it my rasp.

Once at work I sat down at my desk and opened the slightly reddish Tupperware. Assuring myself that there was no faint smell of tomato or oregano I pulled out the veteran shard of vanilla and took the rasp from its sheath placing it over oatmeal.

As I grated the vanilla a fine delicate scent filled the air; the tropic incense rolled over my desk lugubriously like fog. The fine powder began to decorate the top of what I thought would be the very best oatmeal ever had in Sacramento County.

That was when she arrived. She had come to her rational conclusion. It had only required momentary observation. From her point of view I can understand that seeing someone fervently grating a tiny shard of vanilla over a bowl of seemingly trail-mix studded oatmeal at seven in the morning at their desk would be a bit off.

However you, the food loving reader, know better.

The oatmeal was ephemeral as breakfasts do go. The second the hot-as-hell water struck and I began to swirl all the ingredients together I could perceive the various swoons and sniffs from my co-workers, their noses in the air trying to locate the source of the aroma - the heat from the cinnamon perking them awake and the vanilla seducing them to my Path of Oatmeal.

The shallow end is overrated in my opinion. I may be over the deep end, but it tastes better here.