Failure

MMMM Oatmeal.

I LOVE OATMEAL!

Especially this oatmeal served at The Grove in San Francisco.

Steel cut oats cooked overnight and served with fresh fruit, nuts and brown sugar.  My mouth waters thinking about it.  I've been craving this oatmeal for months.  I decided I wanted to make it here at home so I've been looking at mini crock pots to make it in.  Turns out my oldest daughter had a mini-crockpot she never uses so I borrowed it.  I found a recipe online that I thought said I could use regular oatmeal since I didn't have any steel cut oats or groats in the house.  I threw the oats, water, sugar, sliced up a nice apple and threw some crasins in the slow cooker wrote a sweet note for the family and went to bed.

This is what greeted the family in the morning.

I think I made pectin. :S

And I want to throw up every time I look at this picture.

So it's a big time failure.

Do I cry and complain all day because I failed?

I could.

I could take it personally and say that I am a failure because my oatmeal failed.

Thankfully I have a great example of what to do.  My friend Jane experiments with foods all the time.  I am always amazed at what she makes and with her wonderful attitude toward her adventures.  So thanks to Jane I will blog about my failure and figure out what I can learn so that I can move on and succeed.

So what did I learn? What will I do next?

1. Don't use this recipe with regular oats - nope, never, na-dah, just don't do it

2. Perhaps try it again with regular oats but with half the water - would the long cooking time still be bad with half the water?  Something to think about

3. Definitely buy some steel cut oats and/or groats

4. Try this again once I buy some steel cut oats and/or groats

5. Pray that the family will be willing to try it again once the above corrections have been made

What failures have you learned from?