Overnight Pumpkin Pie Oats
Here it is November and the pumpkin themed breakfasts are continuing, but since I am not getting complaints I will assume I can stay on this course for at least a few more weeks. I don't just make any pumpkin recipe--it has to appeal to me in a couple of ways: it has to be healthy; and it has to sound tasty. The first requirement is for me, the second one is for Keshav. Not that he doesn't want his breakfast to be healthy as well, but that is definitely a second priority for him, behind tastiness. Not gonna fault him there--I am not partial to non-tasty healthy recipes either!
These overnight oats were pretty basic at the outset. What makes them fall-themed is the addition of nutmeg, cinnamon, and pumpkin puree at the end, after they have soaked overnight in milk. The recipe called for nuts on top and also sliced banana. I added some nuts from my "grain-less" granola, which is basically sweetened roasted nuts in itself. I did not add the sliced banana, but instead put the whole banana on the side, because Keshav told me that he would have trouble with the "two different textures". In this case that would have been crunchy (the nuts) and soft (the banana).
At this point I accept and don't judge his food idiosyncrasies. It doesn't really matter if he eats the banana sliced or whole, it all ends up in the same place, as my mother used to say. By the way, she would say this when I complained that the foods on my plate were "touching", which was one of my childhood food idiosyncrasies. I got over that one.
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I am trying a new thing this month where I logged out of Facebook and Instagram as a way to stop watching reels in spare moments. I don't spend an inordinate amount of time watching reels, but I want to take a break from them primarily because they neither subtract nor add to my life. They just take up time. I was influenced by a recent podcast listen where mindfulness was being discussed, and the interviewee shared that he had done the same thing, simply because he came to the same conclusion (before me, of course!). It really hit me that there are things we do in our lives that, despite not being harmful, are still sucking life out of our days.
I am not saying that every single moment needs to have meaning and purpose, but I am not not saying that either. Accepting that I will have mindless moments in the day when my brain goes on idle for one reason or another, I also am drawn to the idea that I can increase the moments of my day when I am paying attention to what I am paying attention to. That might be something, and it might be nothing, but the action of attention is self-directed rather than being directed by the object of attention.
They say that we are consumed with "passive entertainment": content where we watch but don't participate. There can be value in this at times, but you don't need me to tell you that nowadays most people spend way too much time in this "activity". The result is often lethargy and depression, since the content we are consuming is often empty, leaving us entertained but unchallenged. It is the equivalent of eating candy. Now that I think about it, it also is how I used to feel after masturbating--the feeling of "What was that all for?"
When I first started watching reels, I loved them because they often exposed me to new artists or ways of thinking. I have discovered a lot of new music and comedy performers by watching short reels, and I am grateful for that. But I have noticed that lately, with the intrusion of AI, the reels that come into my feed are less about informing and more about nothing. I don't want to spend my time watching them. I also notice that, in the past few months, it feels like it is harder to slow my thinking down. I am not okay with that, and ten minutes of meditation in the morning is not enough to neutralize 30 minutes of online content.
So no content for a month. I will continue to read the news and watch long-form videos on YouTube, because I have more control over what I consume in those arenas. But I am looking forward to just...noticing.
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