Changes

I'm a "Baby Boomer", born in 1955, schooled in the '60's and out on my own in the '70's. Actually not, I graduated from college in January of '79. It wasn't until my grandparents decided to sell the house we lived in, that my parents were looking at houses they could afford in the mid 80's. At the time I was working at a local radio station, and averaging five hours of sleep a day. The houses my parents could afford were further away, and if I moved with them, my sleep time would have lessened, so I decided that I wanted to live under my own rules. My folks didn't really like my lifestyle, so it was time to get away. I chose the David Bowie song title for this blog, since the 70's were when I was getting itchy to get out from under the wings of my overbearing parents.
As a single male, one of the things I had to do was learn to prepare meals for myself. I think I suceeded at that point. When I was in high school, there were cooking classes called Home Economics, or "Home Ec". Any guys who took that class were immediately suspect of being "fruity". Of course nobody ever questioned why so many of the great chefs are men, or accused them of being gay. Also, where better to meet women, than in cooking classes? Alas, I wasn't that sharp in those days and missed all the fun. I had to do it the Trial & Error way. Being a diabetic, meal preparation has always been a crucial point of survival. The fact that I'm still alive leads me to believe that I've been at least partially sucessful. In my younger years, I was also driving, so I had more time to prepare meals before dashing off to work. One of the easiest meals to fix was also one of the healthiest...oatmeal. It wasn't rocket science, if you wanted a cup of oatmeal, you boiled two cups of water, added the meal, stirred, put it in a bowl, added milk and sweetener and voila, you were done.
Lately things have changed. I've restarted eating oatmeal after a long hiatus, and if I add one cup of oatmeal to two cups of water, I get...runny, drippy, gruel. How have oats mutated to cause this phenomenon? Why all of a sudden ( maybe it isn't so sudden, maybe I just never noticed) has oatmeal required less water to get a consistent density? Why do the instructions tell you to add too much water? Don't they have people who test these minute details out? Does all the world except for me eat sloppy, runny, oatmeal? I'm really stunned by this development. I've refined my oatmeal making procedures, I now add 3/4 of a cup of oatmeal to 1 cup of water and things work fine. So I'm able to adapt, but why has oatmeal been reduced to an unappetizing slop? I thought they want people to be "heart healthy". Does the rest of the civilized world really eat oatmeal this way? Am I the deviate as opposed to the norm? I wish that somebody would explain this to me, but since nobody reads these bloggy bits, I'm betting that I don't get any answers, leaving me to just wonder...