
The Film (based on book by Gloria Naylor)
The Women of Brewster Place (1989)- A TV mini-series (back when network TV had those) starring Oprah and a bunch of other people. It's about an ensemble of strong-willed female characters who live in an east coast project housing development and ride the ups and mostly downs of life in the projects.

The Scene
The Women of Brewster Place is one of those films from the 80's (like The Color Purple) with many memorable quotes and scenes. I haven't watched it recently but, like The Color Purple, it makes frequent appearances in my brain world.
The Inspiration
The conversation about beige bras and oatmeal between lesbian lovers, Lorraine (played by Lonette McKee who looks like Lena Horne 2.0 if you ask me) & Theresa aka "Tee" (played by Paula Kelly).
Lorraine is trippin' because she's closeted and in denial about being "different". She tries to illustrate this in a monologue about how she wakes up every day, puts on a beige bra and oatmeal same as the day before she first kissed a girl and the day after. Tee points out that the fact that Lorraine didn't go to school the next day gushing about it in the girls lockeroom shows how different she indeed is, inspite of her life-constants, beige bras and oatmeal.

I found a youtube clip! The link is cued, but just in case, it starts around 4:58. Watch it here.
Also, I should note, oatmeal shows up in another scene where Tee spots the nosey old neighbor lady spying on her through the window as she makes meat loaf. During her angry screaming rant through the window she says something like, "Wanna see something really freaky? I put oatmeal in my meatloaf!" Because we're strange and awesome, me and my brother quoted that line all the time after we saw it. We still do at random moments. Also, that was the first time I found out there was even oatmeal in meatloaf. Clearly it made an impression because the one or two times I've ever made it in my life, I look for the recipe with oats in it rather than breadcrumbs. So yeah, The Women of Brewster Place and oatmeal are kind of married in my brain so it naturally inspired this recipe.
The Eats

Ingredients:
1 cup old fashioned oats (If you prefer steele cut oats, fine, but it will need to boil longer)
3-4 cremini mushrooms chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
1/4 of a red onion diced
3/4 cup water
salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
In a pot over medium heat, sauté the red onions in olive oil until they start to carmelize a bit then add mushrooms. Salt and pepper them as desired.

Once the vegetables are soft, add the water and increase heat to bring it to a boil. This will create a kind of broth. Add the oats to the boiling water and cook according to directions.
While that cooks, you can slice and sauté red onions and mushrooms to top the finished dish like this...

When the oatmeal is done, bowl it up and top with shaved cheese, or additional stir-fried vegetables like I did. Add a side of kale or even eggs and you got yourself a pretty healthy, savory meal.


Oatmeal with red onions and mushrooms. That's Different!
