In the beginning, there were groats.

Actually, in the beginning, you have to grow some oats. I don’t know about that part. I do know that at some point you end up with groats, which are whole oats, shaped like grains of rice. You could cook them into porridge at this point, but you’d get something more like risotto than breakfast.

So oats are generally processed further. They can be rolled between big metal rollers to make the familiar Quaker oats in a paper can. If they’re rolled ultra-thin, those are quick-cooking oats. They can also be rolled relatively thick, and then you get something like Snoqualmie Falls or Bob’s Red Mill (these are both Northwest brands; I don’t know if they’re sold nationally, but if not, you probably have a similar local product). Thick rolled oats aren’t too bad.

At the top of the oat heap, though, are steel-cut oats, which are just groats sliced into small chunks. There are two problems with steel-cuts, though: they’re expensive and they take a long time to cook.

I’m going to put on my consumer advocate hat (“consumer advocate” is such a nice way of saying “cheapskate,” isn’t it?) and offer the answer to the first problem. The most common brand of steel-cut oats is McCann’s Irish Oatmeal. It comes in a white can and it won a prize for uniformity of granulation in 1893. I have no reason to believe that McCann’s granulation is any less uniform today, but the price is outrageous–sometimes as much as $8 for a 30-ounce can.

Instead, head to your local health food store, the hippier the better, and look in the bulk bins. Mine carries organic steel-cut oats for 89 cents a pound. Alternatively, try Trader Joe’s, which sells McCann’s but also another brand of steel-cut oats that goes for about $1.25/pound.

As for the cooking time, McCann’s has a page of tips, but none of them really seems like much of a timesaver unless you can remember to soak the oats the night before.

Instead, use Alton Brown’s recipe. Part of the experience of eating oats, it seems to me, is in the anticipation, watching them bubble for half an hour before you even get to taste.

This morning at breakfast I gave Iris a little bowl of brown sugar so she could sprinkle it on her oats. Naturally, she ate the sugar with her spoon.

Yesterday Iris and I had a great visit to Pike Place Market. Our main goal was to get some mussels for dinner and check out the new bun bakery, and we were successful. Mostly.

Usually we buy from Pure Food Fish, but I figured mussels are mussels, so we bought from Pike Place Fish, the fish-throwing guys. The guy bagged up our mussels with a little ice and then–I don’t know how I didn’t see this coming–shouted “bag of mussels!” and flung the bag to the guy behind the counter, who caught it with a loud crack. “They must do this dozens of times a day,” I thought. “They wouldn’t have just broken a bunch of my mussels.” Of course, when we got home, there was a stunning level of mussel breakage. Moral: stick with Pure Food Fish.

The new bun bakery is the second location of [Belle Epicurean](http://www.belleepicurean.com/), the sticky bun artisans who started out at the University Farmer’s Market a couple of years ago and have now colonized downtown. I wrote about them for the Seattle Times. Their new Pike Place location, called Belle’s Buns, sells sweet and savory buns and coffee. It’s near the donuts, across from Delaurenti. Iris and I got a green apple bun, and Howard, one of the owners, gave us their new citrus bun to try. Laurie ate the citrus for breakfast, so I can’t comment on that, but the apple bun was very tasty and topped with a paper-thin apple slice. I was going to warn that it’s extremely sticky, but I guess it is a sticky bun.

Iris and I ate the bun while standing in front of the donut machine, which was probably a little rude. Someday I want to conduct an experiment and see just how long Iris will watch the donut machine before she gets bored. When I try to drag her away from it, she says, “Just one more.” She says this at least sixteen times before we actually escape.

I was ready to head home, but Iris reminded me, “Get some tomatillos.” So we popped over to El Mercado Latino and bought some. In the summer we get incredible yellow and purplish tomatillos from Alvarez farm at the farmer’s market, but winter tomatillos are still pretty good. Unlike tomatoes, tomatillos transport and hold quite well. As long as the tomatillos you find are firm and unblemished, go ahead and buy them.

They also sell tomatillos at my local QFC, but the turnover is too low. If they’ve gotten a recent delivery, the quality is fine, but they often sit around for a week and get a little shriveled and moldy. If your supermarket has the same problem, try asking when they get tomatillo deliveries. The other day Iris and I were at QFC and they had lady apples, something I had heard of but never seen. They’re tiny green apples, the size of large cherries. I don’t know what you do with them, though they seem to be a Martha Stewart favorite. Anyway, I showed one to Iris and asked, “What’s that?”

“Tomatillo?” she asked.

We brought home our loot and I made *moules marinières* and fried potatoes for dinner, the ones from Fine Cooking with smoked paprika. This was Iris’s first experience with mussels, and she enjoyed pulling them out of the shells more than actually eating them, but she did eat a few. I neglected the cardinal rule of mussels, which is to get the bowls really hot before serving, so they were not as good as they could have been.

Probably you’ve forgotten the title of this post by now amid the mussels and buttery buns and lard-fried potatoes, but we’re almost there.

I use tomatillos a few different ways–I’ve made a sauce for salmon and some good pork chile verde, but my far my favorite thing to do with them is make a simple roasted tomatillo salsa. The recipe is from Rick Bayless. To say this is the best salsa I’ve ever made would be understating it: this is the best salsa I’ve ever eaten, by a huge margin. You have to like things spicy and sour, though.

Obviously I’m not shy about using various animal products in my cooking, but there’s no denying that a big bowl of this salsa and half a bag of tortilla chips makes a completely satisfying vegan meal. And vegan cooking is a diversion in the same way lipograms are. (Lipogramming is writing with arbitrary letters of the alphabet omitted, like trying to write without the letter E. Like vegan cooking, it’s an interesting idea that gets old fast.)

I know chips and salsa doesn’t sound like a meal, but trust me, it’s easy to eat a large amount of this salsa. If you have a vegan friend coming over, go out tomatillo shopping.

I have another favorite vegan meal: peperonata con bruschetta, toasted rustic bread with stewed bell peppers (omit the pancetta for the vegan version, obviously). And possibly others that I haven’t noticed are vegan yet.

**ROASTED TOMATILLO-SERRANO SALSA**
Adapted from Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen

*This salsa has a short shelf life. By the end of the day after you make it, it’s over. Luckily, it won’t make it that far. Iris likes to eat this by dipping a chip, licking the salsa off the chip, and redipping. She’s not the first kid I’ve seen do so; once at a 2nd birthday party, I saw two boys stand next to the salsa bowl for twenty minutes, making it through a total of maybe four chips.*

1 pound tomatillos, husked and rinsed
5 serrano chiles
2 large cloves garlic, unpeeled
4 ounces chopped yellow onion
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1 heaping teaspoon salt
sugar to taste

1. Adjust oven rack to top position and preheat broiler. Place tomatillos on a foil-lined baking sheet and broil 5 minutes, then flip each tomatillo and broil 5 minutes more. Set aside to cool.

2. Heat a cast-iron or stainless pan (not nonstick) over medium heat. Add the garlic and serranos. Toast, turning occasionally. The chiles will take about 10 minutes and the garlic about 15 minutes. Transfer to a plate, and when cool, stem the chiles and peel the garlic.

3. Puree chiles, garlic, and tomatillos in the food processor until well mixed but a little chunky. Rinse onions in a strainer, then stir into the salsa along with cilantro, salt, and sugar. Go very easy on the sugar at first; you may not actually need any and probably won’t need more than 1/2 teaspoon.