One Like and One Dislike

Like: The thing I like to do during a work Zoom call is to go off camera, go on mute, then go into the Teams Group Chat and make snarky texts to teammates. I love to watch them react. I know I'm not the only one who does this. This needs a needs term if one doesn't exist. Smiling and Lurking = Smurking? 

Dislike: Wow, I do NOT like savory oatmeal. Thought I would. Perhaps it was because I didn't follow a recipe, I just made steel cut oatmeal and sprinkled in cheese and bacon. It was glutinous and vile. 

Comments

[KC]

Meeting commentary between non-participants can be glorious! But it is maaaybe kind of mean to do that to people who are on-camera.

I have not tried savory oatmeal, but I do like congee, and do like lightly-sweetened oatmeal cooked like it's barley or something rather than cooked to glue. I doubt cheese and bacon would do the trick of converting oatmeal to savory oatmeal - something that really salts the oatmeal itself during cooking would likely be necessary?

However, that doesn't mean you need to try it again!

[theQueen]

KC- oh, ours are never spite of gossip. Usually just very apt gifs of the facial expressions we want to make. Now I have to look up congee.

[KC]

I was thinking making someone laugh at an inappropriate time in a meeting while on camera would potentially be mean. :-)

Congee will 100% not look impressive; it is rice porridge, cooked until very dead. To understand it, you have to actually try a bowl made by someone competent (which could well be you) and seasoned adequately. (I endorse pork.) But also you don't have to try it! It's just the reason, along with how good barley+mushrooms are, and risotto, that I think savory oatmeal might have promise if not gluey-cooked and if seasoned well.

[theQueen]

KC - well, it sounds like risotto, and I love risotto.

[KC]

Yes, perhaps an extra-comforting Chinese risotto soup? It's less rich than most of the risotto I've had, though, which is an advantage when you want to eat a giant bowl of it...

(of course, congee almost certainly predates risotto, but still: we work from what's familiar to us, not what's most original/authentic/first...)

[theQueen]

KC - going to Amazon right now to see if I can order just a wee bit of sushi rice,

[KC]

I use plain ol' normal rice for it, but sushi rice is good, too! My favorite flavorings are having some sort of meat/savory flavoring (not-super-lean ground pork is good), salt, ginger, and white pepper. (test salt levels with a spoonful; if the congee tastes ugh/bland, pull out a spoonful of it, salt the spoonful, and see whether that magically transforms it; if not, add more ginger [preferably fresh, minced or pureed or run through a microplane] and white pepper and meat)

[theQueen]

KC - Ooh! I have almost all of those things.

[KC]

Minced garlic in the base and green onion added to the soup later: also good. I forgot those, because with IBS I stopped eating them for a while, but they make things so much better... but fundamentally, just flavor it how it tastes good to you, but personally I really like the quiet ginger/garlic/white-pepper flavor and heat blend, on a base of some kind of umami/meatiness, with an intermittent bit of something else (green onion, or one of my favorite actually-Chinese but in America congee-makers just put plain ol' frozen mixed veggies in there for the occasional slightly-different flavor bite). (It'd be culinarily heretical, probably, but I bet the kind of dried seaweed you put in miso soup would be a really good non-pork umami option, if you have a bag of it in the cupboard.)

[theQueen]

KC - I will probably go with a recipe to start. Things don't go well when I get creative with food.

[KC]

This is entirely fair and reasonable.