It's a Coco Wheats morning.

The thermometer on the Windows sidebar says it's 18 degrees, and looking out the window, everything is calm. If a fly were to land on a branch of the tree out back, the branch would snap off, fall to ground and shatter into a million toothpicks.

Jon Anderson is singing to me on the television to my back, or perhaps it's Benolt David, It looks like Anderson, but I don't know what David looks like. David is the guy who replaced him on the Yes tour in 2008; if it's David, he's damn good at imitating Jon Anderson's voice. And as I write this, they finish All Good People, and begin singing Roundabout.

The Problem With 101

The problem with Channel 101 is that there isn't much program information available anywhere, so I don't know when this concert was filmed On the other hand, it's rapidly becoming my favorite channel. There are just so many concerts by musicians I care about, and shows that you can't get anywhere else.

Recently, I've been watching a lot of the Dan Patrick show. That's a radio show to most people, but to people with DirecTV, it's television. The amazing thing about the Dan Patrick show is that I find it enjoyable even though I don't really care much about sports in general.

My wife was a jock. She's pissed off that DirecTV took away ESPN Classic from us, and put it in the premium sports package, giving us ESPNU instead. I figure college basketball is a whole lot better than pro ball. She would rather see reruns of pro basketball than see college ball, which just shows how PHRASE DELETED FOR BLOGGER SAFETY.

Making Coco Wheats

But anyway, it's a wonderful Coco Wheats morning. I made myself a bowl of it yesterday, and Blondie commented that she'd never had any, but she declined my offer to fix her a bowl, or even a spoonful of mine.

She had the microwave tied up cooking something, and she was moving around the range so rapidly doing this and that, and the grease was sputtering so much that it was dangerous to get near the cooktop, so I filled the tea kettle with water from the hot tap, and set it on to boil, then removed myself from the kitchen until the tea kettle started whistling at me. It's dangerous to be around Blondie when she'd cooking breakfast unless you're clothed. (Doesn't everyone cook their Coco Wheats in the nude?)

I grabbed a plastic bowl instead of the ceramic cereal bowl I usually use, and measured a half scoop of Coco Wheats into the bowl, and added some salt and some sugar. Then I grabbed the teakettle, retired to the dining table, where I measured out two scoops of boiling water, and poured it into plastic bowl, and started stirring madly.

My theory was that the Coco Wheats didn't really need to cook, it just needed to fully hydrate, and it turns out that I was right. After about 30 seconds, I gave the Coco Wheats a taste, and they were OK. I added milk atop the cereal and had myself a wonderful breakfast, that and a naval orange, cut into quarters so I could pull out the segments with my tongue, no peeling needed.

Browning Hash

Actually, I think I want hash browns this morning instead of an orange, or maybe I want them in addition to the orange. I'm going to drop a tater into the french fry cutter, then stack the fries sideways into the cutter and cut again, so I end up with cubes. Then I will drop them into a saucepan of boiling water for ten minutes while I sit in the living room, and I'll drain the taters in a colander. Once they drain for a couple of minutes, I'll toss them in the skillet and brown them.

The TV cooking shows want to start and finish within 30 mintues, and that's fine, I suppose, for some things, but I'm more interested in how much of my time it takes to cook something, rather than how much of the clock's time. Lazy cooking often brings out the flavors in a way that frantic cooking cannot.

Buddy Guy is playing "It feels like rain" on 101 now, a Guitar Center concert. I'm not a great blues fan, but I generally like any kind of music if it's done well, and Buddy Guy does it well. There are exceptions. I don't like Gregorian Chant, even the best of it.

My blood sugar is dropping, and I'm starting to develop a migraine from it. It's not a migraine headache but an optical migraine, making it hard to see. I better add some images to this post right quick and head down to the kitchen before I suffer brain damage. Er, uh, more brain damage.