Sweet or savory? If forced to choose, I know where I stand. Not that I lack the sweet tooth that is hard-wired into our shared biology—all mammals have a propensity for sweetness because it's a good predictor of high nutritional value—but sugar is hard on my body, and over the years I have gradually learned to resist its addictive pleasures. I was not raised on soda, so thankfully I never had to wean myself from that. Nevertheless, with the holidays coming up there will be lots of temptation, what with the pumpkin pie and the eggnog and my own yearly batch of caramels. Between my resistance movement and the gluten intolerance factor, our kitchen sees very little baking action. For all that I have loved and adored lemon meringue pie and chocolate chip cookies and German chocolate cake and cheesecake over the years, we've simply grown apart. So when the lovely people at Tate's sent me a review copy of owner Kathleen King's new Baking for Friends: Over 120 Scrumptious Recipes from Southampton's Favorite Baker, I was curious if it would inspire me. (I had some inkling of what was possible, because we're occasional and enthusiastic fans of Tate's gluten-free chocolate chip cookies, which are excellent facsimiles of their crisp and buttery wheat version.)
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As in bleached, refined, high-heat-processed, denatured, extruded and packaged breakfast cereals. You know the cutesy O's and puffs and crisps we all grow up eating? Poison. In reading Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon's excellent, information-packed guide to eating and cooking for maximum health and nutrition (and enjoyment!), I learned something that I had sort of intuited already but that still seemed shocking when I really understood the facts: the extreme processing to which much packaged food is subjected not only robs what we eat of essential nutrients but can actually be toxic to us. It's particularly true for grains and nuts, which contain fragile oils that turn rancid, and thus harmful, when subjected to heat. That's what makes breakfast cereals so bad for you. The grains are totally broken down and then extruded at extremely high temperatures; ever notice how little they resemble any actual food? Even those "healthy" boxed cereals should be ruled out, including granola and rolled oats. For the most part, convenience foods are not at all convenient for our bodies. As easy as it is to dump some Cheerios and homogenized milk into a bowl, it takes just 15 minutes more to cook up a breakfast that actually has some nutritional value.
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I  love oatmeal (so does Thomas Keller—apparently it's one of his go-to late night suppers!) and frequently make more than I need just so I can have the pleasure of eating these fried oatmeal cakes. It's another way of getting a little variety into that first meal of the day. I think I got the idea from Mark Bittman, but it's not much of a revelation. Hey, you take leftover oatmeal and fry it up in a pan. Still, it has a lovely, chewy texture and makes a great vehicle for all sorts of toppings. Sometimes I'll have it with in the traditional Irish manner, with some buttermilk and brown sugar, others I'll shower it with sea salt and a good dose of Tabasco.

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Around the holidays, a frenzy of baking takes place. Everyone is spritzing out those German butter cookies, rolling Mexican wedding cookies, dipping things in chocolate and sticking on sprinkles. And god bless them. But ever since my holistic nutritionist Sally Kravich likened eating white flour to putting elementary-school paste up my butt, I've tried to drastically reduce the amount of traditional baked goods I eat. (And after that lovely analogy you may, too, right?) The refined sugar, the refined flour, the Crisco...it's just not doing me any favors. And because G cannot eat gluten, options diminish even further. But none of this means I'm going to give up the occasional indulgence. So when I feel like eating a cookie, I make these deliciously chewy, assertively spiced, buttery little oat cookies that pack a lot of flavor.
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