Good morning, it’s Wednesday and we’re halfway through the week already.
As the weather trends towards downright frigid in the morning, I find myself increasingly abandoning my beloved toast in favor of something warmer and a little heartier for breakfast, which, truth be told, in the case of someone who rises regularly at around 4 to 5 a.m. is probably more like lunch by the time I feel up to it.
At that point – around 10 or 11 a.m. usually, when I’ve gotten home from the gym and finished the first round of morning calls – I’m somewhere between hangry and ravenous. Toast at that moment is just not going to cut it. At these moments, I usually opt for a giant bowl of oatmeal, mixed with protein powder and/or cottage cheese and/or egg whites, and topped with a generous sprinkling of cinnamon plus blueberries and maple syrup.
Before you start getting all judgey or accusing me of being some sort of muscle-head, the combination of protein and complex carbs is scientifically proven to lead to a steadier release of energy, preventing blood sugar crashes and helping you feel full longer. And yes, the added protein does help with muscle repair and growth, but oatmeal generally is healthy and a good source of fiber.
Some people like protein oats as a pre-workout meal, but I find them a little too heavy for my liking. Oatmeal does have a little bit of protein on its own – between 5 and 6 grams, depending on what kind you opt for.
I’m a big fan of the chew and heft of steel cut oats, which aren’t flattened during processing, but they take a long time to cook – unless you have thought ahead and batch cooked them in the pressure cooker or instapot. I generally cannot be counted on to prepare that far in advance.
Humans have been eating some form of oats for centuries, starting with a wild version collected and consumed by Paleolithic people some 30,000 years ago. Oats were first cultivated in the form of oat grass, historians believe, by the ancient Greeks and Romans about 11,000 years ago, though they were primarily used to feed livestock.
The Romans brought oats to Britain, which were easy to grow in the cool, wet climate. They then migrated to England, Scotland and Wales, where they became a popular form of human nourishment. The U.S. also first used oats as animal feed, and they didn’t catch on as a breakfast food until the local mills and grocery stores took hold.
It appears that we have a German immigrant named Ferdinand Schumacher, who was living in Akron, OH, in the 1850s, to thank for figuring out how to process oats and present them in a way that American shoppers were willing to (ahem) stomach them. He started the German Mills American Oatmeal Company (the precursor to the company that invented and popularized Quaker Oats) and later sold oats to the Union Army as a cost effective way to keep soldiers’ bellies full.
Steel cut oats are actually NOT the least process version available. That honor goes to groats, which are dehulled oat grass deeds. The Irish and/or steel cut version is actually chopped groats, whereas Scottish oats are ground but not flattened groats. Quick oats are steamed, flattened, AND chopped, while instant oats are chopped basically to a powder and often pre-cooked.
About 22 million metric tons of oats were consumed globally last year – that’s oats in ALL forms, including animal feed – with the largest consumers being Russia, Canada, and the U.S. The sale of hot cereal and oatmeal (things like Cream of Wheat etc. also count) amounted to $1.93 billion in the U.S. alone in 2023.
Today is National Oatmeal Day, which you can celebrate by eating oatmeal in one or more of its many forms – as cereal, muesli, granola, cookies, bars, shakes, and more.
There will be another chilly start to the day – perfect for oatmeal consumption! – with temperatures again rising into the mid-50s. Skies will be mostly sunny, with a few afternoon clouds.
In the headlines…
President Donald Trump yesterday appeared to rule out seeking a third term, acknowledging that the Constitution is “pretty clear” that he is not allowed to run again.
“It’s a very interesting thing. I have the best numbers for any president in many years,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One while flying to South Korea. “I would say that if you read it, (the Constitution) it’s pretty clear, I’m not allowed to run. It’s too bad.”
Trump has appealed the guilty verdicts against him in the Stormy Daniels hush money case, blasting the prosecution as politically motivated and seeking to wipe clean the criminal record he racked up before his return to power.
With the 96-page appeal, filed in the First Department of the State Supreme Court’s Appellate Division at about 11:30 p.m., Trump began the legal effort to scrub away the stain of his 34 felony convictions.
The Pentagon has pulled key protections for its civilian personnel, directing managers to move with “speed and conviction” to fire underperforming workers, according to a memo issued one day before the U.S. government shut down.
The Senate voted 52 to 48 to pass the resolution sponsored by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to terminate President Trump’s 50-percent tariffs on Brazilian imports, such as coffee, oil and orange juice.
While the resolution faces long odds in the House, where Republicans have taken extraordinary steps to make it more difficult to bring up such measures, the vote signaled bipartisan frustration with the president’s tariffs on most goods from Brazil.
Two Trump administration officials in charge of food aid are leaving their posts amid the government shutdown as the program that funds food stamps is set to lapse.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to conduct strikes in Gaza yesterday as the government accused Hamas of violating the cease-fire agreement by firing on Israeli forces and failing to return the bodies of dead hostages.
The Israeli military carried out airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, according to local health officials, throwing the tenuous U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas into question.
More than 90 Palestinians were killed in a wave of Israeli strikes in Gaza last night, the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency and hospitals say.
Heavy floodwaters swept across southwestern Jamaica, winds tore roofs off buildings and boulders tumbled into roads yesterday as Hurricane Melissa came ashore as a catastrophic Category 5 storm, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record.
Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Cuba early this morning after leaving a swath of destruction in Jamaica, where most people were cut off from the internet and major airports remained closed.
Shortly before Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Cuba, there were reports of flooding and a landslide in Santiago de Cuba, the nation’s second biggest city, according to Granma, the state newspaper.
Rep. Elise Stefanik is leading incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul 43-42 in the New York gubernatorial race, according to a poll released by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. Nine percent said they support someone else, while 7 percent are “not sure.”
The poll showed the Republican congresswoman — who has said she will officially declare her bid after the Nov. 4 election — leading Hochul with those aged 50 and up and among critical independent voters, especially in the suburbs.
Hochul’s campaign said the Manhattan Institute’s polling was off in the New York City primary and also noted Trump allies on its board.
The judge assigned to a new lawsuit aiming to redraw New York’s 11th Congressional District previously represented state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins in her first two contentious elections and worked as special counsel to Hochul.
New York has joined a coalition of states suing the USDA seeking to force the federal government to provide funding for a federally subsidized food assistance program that is set to stop Saturday as the federal government shutdown enters its fourth week.
“Millions of Americans are about to go hungry because the federal government has chosen to withhold food assistance it is legally obligated to provide,” AG Tish James said in a statement. “The federal government must do its job to protect families.”
Zohran Mamdani could become mayor without a majority of support, thanks to Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa splitting the vote – and despite New Yorkers opposing his socialist policies, a poll released by the Manhattan Institute found.
The five-day Manhattan Institute survey, which closed Sunday, shows Mamdani leading with 43 percent of likely voters’ support, followed by Cuomo’s 28 percent and Republican nominee Sliwa’s 19 percent. Another 8 percent were undecided.
Mamdani has said that his education at Bowdoin College, a small liberal arts institution in Maine, was formative. But critics say that his degree exemplifies how colleges steep students in leftist dogma.
Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said that a story in which he was reported to discuss Mamdani and criticized his policy proposals in The Times of London newspaper was “false and fabricated.”
The Times of London took the article down, about two hours after publication, “after discovering that our reporter had been misled by an individual falsely claiming to be the former New York mayor,” the paper said in a statement.
A campaign finance watchdog group, the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, filed two criminal referrals against Mamdani, claiming that he received illegal contributions from foreign donors, but his campaign maintains that any issues have been resolved.
“These are not isolated incidents or clerical errors,” Coolidge Reagan Foundation President Dan Backer said. “This was a sustained pattern of foreign money…which is a clear violation of both federal law and New York City campaign finance rules.”
Congressional Republicans have a “battle plan to weaponize” Mamdani as the new face of the Democratic Party in House battleground races, according to a memo first shared with Axios.
Though New York City’s public school system has not been a focal point of Mamdani’s mayoral agenda, his campaign has quietly started reaching out to education advocates to collect ideas.
Jewish actor Mandy Patinkin voiced support for Mamdani in a video circulated on Instagram yesterday, calling Mamdani “a deeply thoughtful human being” who would be “the best NYC mayor imaginable”.
Mamdani was greeted warmly in an interview with The Daily Show host Jon Stewart, who told him: “You are clearly right now in the front-running position. I can tell, because they’ve gone 9/11 on you.”
Anti-Mamdani Republican City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov is pulling support for her “loyal friend” Sliwa and endorsing Cuomo in the hotly contested mayor’s race.
After he resigned as governor, Cuomo looked to restore his name while taking on a new lucrative career as a podcast host. Things did not go according to plan.
Mamdani has pledged to “freeze the rent” for tenants in New York City’s 1 million regulated apartments. But getting it done may require him to fire members of the city’s Rent Guidelines Board if he wins the general election on Nov. 4 and takes office in January.
Former Gov. David Paterson endorsed Cuomo’s campaign for mayor, putting himself back in the former governor’s camp after initially backing Mayor Eric Adams in the general election.
Besides Mamdani, there’s only one major candidate who Paterson hasn’t blessed with his support — but Republican nominee Sliwa doesn’t want it, anyway.
In the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 terror attack on Israel, Adams privately compared pro-Palestine protests to Ku Klux Klan rallies, claims a new lawsuit accusing him and other members of his administration of discriminating against Muslim employees.
Hassan Naveed, who was fired from City Hall last year, claimed in a lawsuit that he was asked what he thought about “beheaded babies.”
Cuomo is making inroads with New York City’s Muslim community — vowing to open the first Arabic language charter school, if elected mayor.
Two groups, one representing street vendors and the other representing delivery-app workers, are joining forces to press for more protection from New York City.
A $700 million project to rehabilitate three subway stations below 42nd Street with new staircases, escalators, elevators and more was completed yesterday after five years, MTA officials announced.
The NYPD is asking for help identifying three men it says broke into a Queens home earlier this month and stole a safe containing about $3.2 million in cash and jewelry.
The crew dressed as construction workers pulled off the heist by breaking in through the rear door of the home, near 160th St. and 84th Drive in Jamaica Hills, on Oct. 16 around 2:20 p.m. Once inside, they located and cracked a safe that contained the jewelry.
A former state trooper’s lawsuit challenging her firing after testing positive for amphetamines can move forward following a state Supreme Court justice’s ruling this week that found she has made “sufficient allegations” that her due process rights were violated.
Daylight saving time — often incorrectly referred to as daylight savings time — ends Sunday, Nov. 2, which means it’s time to set clocks back an hour.
Price Chopper is closing its store on North Main Street in Gloversville on Jan. 10, after reviewing the store’s “current and future viability.”
Cameras will soon be deployed outside schools in Schenectady to enforce speed limits with the goal of deterring dangerous driving.
Nauman Hussain is refusing to sit for a videotaped deposition from Attica Correctional Facility, where he is serving 5 to 15 years for manslaughter in the deaths of 20 people in the 2018 limousine crash in Schoharie.
An attorney representing roughly 1,100 former employees of the now-closed St. Clare’s Hospital, has asked a U.S. Bankruptcy judge to examine whether their interests are being considered under settlement agreements made on behalf of sexual abuse victims.
The final of three public workshops on the future of the former College of Saint Rose campus will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. tonight.
Bernard F. “Bernie” Conners, whose career over more than seven decades included professional football player, FBI agent, novelist, publisher, movie producer, soda bottler and real estate developer — has died about a month after his 99th birthday.
RIP Michael McKee, an indefatigable tenant organizer who spent 50 years helping to strengthen rent-protection regulations in New York State against challenges by landlords, died on Oct. 21 in his rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan. He was 85.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
