Something I didn’t expect to happen to me now, when I’m forty-one years old, was to start liking oatmeal, but, inspired by Michael Greger’s How Not to Die, which recommends not only whole grains, but turmeric and flaxseed as everyday components of your diet, I decided to try one more time. I prefer making sweets to eating them, and oatmeal with fruit and nuts and the like just never quite did it for me. I knew there was savory oatmeal out there, but I always find oatmeal itself to be bland…why not put those same ingredients on a more pleasant grain, like brown or black rice, quinoa, wild rice, or whole wheat cous cous? Or wrap them in a tortilla or sandwich them into sourdough toast? To name just a few possibilities. But I love soup, I reasoned. Why didn’t I like its close cousin, porridge?

Apparently, because it didn’t have enough turmeric and black pepper. Reading Greger’s Daily Dozen, and thinking about how many components I could get into a morning bowl, I realized turmeric (paired with black pepper ALWAYS because it’s good and because it increases the bioavailability of curcurmin dramatically) and flax could be effortlessly stirred into oatmeal. And when I tried it, I learned that turmeric and pepper (lots of it) make the oats taste almost like curry, which is my favorite food (I realize this is a category of very diverse dishes, but whatever). Into this wonderful slurry you can stir greens, top with avocado and everything bagel sprinkle, and, if god provides, a five-minute egg (read on for more about that). But almost any savory leftover (Lidia’s balsamic red onions, roasted red peppers, roasted-skin-on kabocha squash) would taste good on turmeric-black-pepper oats. The tablespoon of flax neither adds nor detracts from the taste of the dish, but flax is a nutritional powerhouse, and why not have it every day when so little is needed to push the dial of our health? (I also love to bake with flax as an egg substitute in muffins and sweet breads, and I’ll write about that soon.)

And just when I thought there was nothing new under the sun, The New York Times’ Sohla El-Waylly taught me that the best way to make peelable boiled eggs was NOT to start them in cold water, as I had ever and always heard, but instead to subject them to two temperature shocks: refrigerator-cold into boiling water, then boiling water into ice bath. She was right…for once I wasn’t close to murdering myself because I couldn’t get the peel off the egg without taking most of the white. The egg you see here is a five-minute egg: totally set white and almost totally runny yolk. Another thing I like about this method is that the cooking times are more precise than when you start with cold water, because so much can affect how long it takes the water to heat up (size of the pan, amount of water), and therefore boiling for a given number of minutes once a boil is achieved will mean different overall exposure to heat.

I must take a minute to thank our girls, who are already going above and beyond the call of duty by laying in the winter, despite freezing temperatures (it’s enough for me that they survive). But look at the quality of that yolk…superb. (To be clear, there is no filter on that.)