Seriously, when it rains, it pours… and if you’re me it sometimes also turns into a God-forsaken “wintry mix” and then you get locked INSIDE your apartment (yes, it’s totally possible and yes, it’s a COMPLETE fire hazard) and then everything’s broken and nothing’s fine and you end up crying alone in your apartment stomping your feet on the ground and pouting about the world sucking. So, uhm, yea, that was my Monday.

Which is why today absolutely called for something happy, fun, and comforting, and because I’m obviously talking about food, tasty too. Enter OatMeals, a cute little Greenwich Village shop specializing in jazzed up oatmeal, both sweet and savory (which I’d never heard of) and lots of toppings and ingredients to choose from.

Looks like dessert but really it’s fig and Gorgonzola oatmeal

I, for one, love a good bowl of oatmeal. There’s something about soft, warm food that just soothes me, and after the harrowing Monday I had, calming comfort was right up my alley. (I’ll psycho-analyze myself here and say this is probably some deep-seated association going back to baby food. What do you think?) At OatMeals you can have a water base or a milk base, you can go the traditional route with something like brown sugar and cinnamon or fruity with something like pineapple and mango topped oatmeal in coconut milk, you can call it dessert with graham crackers, dulce de leche and whipped cream or make it a meal with something savory, which is exactly what I did.

This beats the hell out of the instant stuff I usually make at home.

With ingredients like bacon, manchego, and truffle oil, all of the savory options seemed good, but I went with the Fig & Gorgonzola oatmeal in the Mama Bear size. (How adorable is that? Instead of small, medium and large, they have baby bear, mama bear and papa bear.) My creamy milk-based oatmeal was covered in a chunky layer of Gorgonzola crumbles, dried figs and a thick swirl of syrupy balsamic vinegar. It definitely wasn’t the peaches and cream or brown sugar and bananas I’m used to, but I liked it. The Gorgonzola gave it a salty, cheesy flavor and the figs and balsamic glaze added a tangy, sweetness that wasn’t too sugary or dessert-like but reminded me of risotto almost.

Did it fix the crapfest that was Monday? No, not really, but it was a tasty distraction and just the right, subtle reminder I needed that everything wasn’t actually broken.  Just some days require a little bit of oatmeal and a cathartic cry, that’s all. Bring on the rest of the week.