When I was a young child, I had a type of gluten intolerance. I don’t know if it was officially diagnosed, but I remember being told that I was allergic to wheat. I don’t think I ever was really allergic. At least I have eaten wheat products for most of my life. But when I was a baby, I was fed oat products and my wheat intake was restricted. As far as I know this never created much of an inconvenience. I enjoyed eating Cheerios and oatmeal. I still do. I also bake whole wheat bread and enjoy eating it.

By the time I was in school, I was eating wheat products without problems. At our house, we had hot cereal most mornings. There was a rotation of oatmeal, cream of wheat, and a whole wheat cereal we called “Salisbury Cereal” after our uncle who raised the wheat. It was ground coarser than flour and we got it directly from the farm. We usually also had eggs and bacon or other breakfast meats as well as the cereal. Generally we had hot cereal in the winter and cold cereal in the summer.

Sometime in my teenage years, Quaker began selling instant oatmeal in single serving packages. The packages came in various flavors. We purchased them for backpacking trips. They were a convenient and easy breakfast. All we had to do was boil water, pour a package into a bowl, add boiling water, and stir. When we first got married, we would keep instant oatmeal on hand for breakfasts. Oatmeal is a staple in our pantry. You won’t find those packets of instant oatmeal any more. We keep quick oatmeal on hand. At home, it is easy to scoop out a bit of oats, add water or milk, and microwave for a short time. Oatmeal is great to have on hand for baking as well. I’m a big fan of oatmeal raisin cookies.

Early in our married life we served as managers and cooks at our summer church camp. At camp we cooked and served hot cereal for breakfast. We also had pancakes, french toast, scrambled eggs, and other breakfast foods, but we made some type of hot cereal most days. On days when we didn’t serve hot cereal, we put out individual boxes of cold cereal for campers.

Over the years I have thought of oatmeal as something that is eaten hot. Actually, I didn’t think about it much at all.

Last week, however, I happened upon a recipe for overnight oats. It’s pretty simple. You put equal parts of regular (not instant) oats and milk in a covered container and let them sit in the refrigerator overnight. You can add whatever additional flavorings you want. I put in some chia seeds, a bit of honey, and some cinnamon. Then, in the morning, I cut up whatever fruit we have on hand and add to the overnight oats. It makes a delicious cold breakfast.

I don’t know if I ever thought of eating oatmeal cold before, but when I first read the recipe, I wondered whether or not I would like to eat cold oatmeal. I also wondered about whether it would work to have oatmeal without somehow cooking the oats. Hot water was such part of the process of preparing oatmeal until I discovered the recipe for overnight oats.

I have no intention of giving up eating hot cereal. It is a welcome treat, especially on winter mornings. I still like a hot breakfast and cook most days. However, I’ve made overnight oats a couple of times since I discovered the recipe and think it will become a regular part of my breakfast menu rotation.

I wonder how many other foods I eat are the product of habit. We like to explore new recipes and eat new foods. One of the joys of traveling has been discovering new foods. Often we will try to make a dish at home that we discovered as a result of exploring something new. When we lived in Chicago, we discovered Greek food and I learned to bake spanakopita. Our Greek cookbook has become one of our favorites. After hosting Japanese exchange students and traveling to Japan we learned to cook sticky rice and enjoy rice with stir-fried vegetables almost every week. There are a lot of foods that we make that weren’t part of the meals we had as children. Now, with the Internet, we can explore new recipes without traveling. Last week Susan made a delicious African peanut soup from a recipe she found. She will frequently bring her computer to the kitchen with a new recipe to try.

Eating patterns change with the passing of generations. Susan’s grandparents used to eat potatoes at every meal. Fried, baked, mashed, scalloped, boiled - her grandmother had several ways of preparing potatoes. Breakfast potatoes were often the result of the previous dinner’s serving. Mashed potatoes became fried potato patties. Baked potatoes could be pan fried. We don’t eat potatoes three times a day at our house. It is probably a good thing. Unlike Susan’s grandparents, I have a tendency to put on extra pounds and I’d probably struggle with my weight even more if we ate as many potatoes as they did.

There are a lot of foods that we enjoy that weren’t served at our childhood tables. Part of this is that there are a lot more foods available in local stores than was the case when we were going up. You would never find avocados in the grocery store in my home town when I was a kid. Seafood wasn’t available except canned. Other foods that used to be seasonally available are available year round.

We try to be careful in our food choices. We prefer to purchase foods that are grown close to where we live. I’ve read that you can make a bigger difference in your carbon footprint by your choice of food than you can by your choice of car. However, there are no peanuts grown anywhere near any place we have ever lived, but peanut butter is a staple in our pantry. When we get down to only one jar, I begin to worry about running out. I don’t think we’ve ever gone a week without peanut butter, but I don’t want to try it.

I’m guessing our grandchildren won’t see the need to always have peanut butter on hand any more than we see the need to always have potatoes in the house.