Rhythm (Overnight oats)
Recognizing pleasure as an essential ingredient
Rhythm without pleasure is gloppy and dull.
This is what I thought when I unscrewed the lid of a jar of overnight oats I had made using a technique my friend Tim taught me. You make the oats in the same container that you eat them out of, so there's minimal dishwashing. You layer rolled oats in a jar with chia seeds, spices, nut butter, dried fruit, water or oat milk to cover, shake it up, leave it overnight. And it works. It's nutrient-dense and ready to go. But when I took the lid off, I felt a twinge of…disappointment, I guess. Like this is functional but not lux. With my husband traveling, I was sole parent taking care of my son, getting breakfast ready the night before, setting up the coffee, setting up the blender for my son’s smoothie, making these oats. I had set myself up for being in a rhythm. And everything is running, but I just wasn't feeling great about it. The missing ingredient was pleasure.
Rhythms elsewhere in my life ask for the same ingredient. Three weeks ago I started as a participant in the Launch1000 program, a startup accelerator sponsored by the County of Westchester where I live. I’ve joined 200 other entrepreneurs to go through a 22-week process of product development, business planning, testing, and de-risking our ventures. And it’s great, exactly the support I need to focus my ideas and make them tangible.
I've already made space in my life to be able to do this. I get up, have our family morning routine, I write and reflect and do any strategic thinking I need to do. I do yoga, make lunch, go for a walk. I have a flexible afternoon to do correspondence, work on volunteer stuff or more venture work, meet up with a friend, whatever I want the afternoon to be before cooking dinner with my husband and watching a show with our son. It's a lot of space and room to follow my own intuition about what I want to do, and still enough structure that I get done the things that are important to me in my day.
Having structure and momentum is good, but there has to be pleasure in it. I need to do something that has no productive value to it — and I do. I rearrange flowers in a vase, weeding out the wilted ones. I work on a puzzle in the afternoon light. I lay in my hammock. I read a book that's not related to any work topic. I write Recipe as Feeling — this process is a really important pleasure for me, a deep need.
So I tweak my overnight oats recipe. I switch techniques to one I used when I was cooking for a women's retreat in Sedona in September 2022. You measure water that's the right ratio for the oats you're cooking, 4:1 for steel-cut oats. You bring it to a boil, add the oats, boil for a minute, put the lid on, turn the heat off, and leave it until the morning. It is perfectly cooked. The texture is viscous and toothsome, and all you need to do is heat it up and add whatever toppings you want.
This particular morning, I add dates and almond butter and rose petals. Another morning, it was walnuts and dried blueberries, or sliced banana and cherry jam. And yes, there's another pot to wash, but the oats are warm and the texture of it is worth it. Rhythm without pleasure is not worth eating.
Recipe as Feeling: Rhythm (Overnight oats)
Assess your routine.
Start fresh.
Play a little.
Follow your light.
Actual recipe
Overnight oats
Serves 1 - can be easily multiplied for more servings
INGREDIENTS:
1 cup water
1/4 cup steel-cut oats
Pinch of sea salt
Any toppings that bring you pleasure (dates and almond butter, dried cherries and hazelnuts, dried blueberries and walnuts, and any edible flowers fresh or dried are all good combinations)
The night before breakfast, measure out the water in a small pot with a lid and bring it to a boil. Add the pinch of salt and the oats and boil for a minute more. Put the lid on the pot, turn off the heat, and leave until morning.
In the morning, heat up the oats in the same pot they cooked in. Serve in your favorite bowl and top with anything that brings you pleasure.