Tennessee Truffle Shuffle

The other night, when making those delicious Peanut Butter-Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, I wanted to make sure I had something like the "rolled oats" that the recipe called for. I knew we had "thick & rough milled" oats and whatever Quaker Oats are...but were they rolled enough? Google, what are rolled oats?

Enter foodsubs.com, aka The Cook's Thesaurus!

This site is so useful. Some parts are admittedly easier to parse than others. If I try to consider individual types of oats and suss out their differences, the letters on the page start to swim and my brain atrophies. But from that mess of swimming letters and brain-mush and pictures of oats that look exactly the same, so much the same, I'd say the point is use whatever oats you have for whatever you're doing because what can it matter in a world where they canceled Firefly but they're still looking for ways to keep Two and a Half Men on life support, what can anything matter!

So I just went with Quaker Oats. It was fine, because any oats are fine. Let's leave it at that.

Check out the green onions & leeks section, though, and you can find out that green onions are scallions are shallots (in Australia!) are spring onions (Fruehlingszwiebeln in Germany!) are Chinese onions (in China?) are stone leeks are cibols! And none of these is a leek! (Don't be fooled by the stone leek, it's a notorious fraud.) And there's even something called a Tennessee truffle, aka a ramp. (Sometimes also masquerading as a wild leek -- were you fooled?) Humble origins, foodie prices. Crazy!

Plus, you can see freaky pictures, like a puddle of mustard oil, which can be found terrorizing internet goers at the oils & cooking sprays section! It haunts my dreams. And Indian markets, apparently.

What are you waiting for? The Cook's Thesaurus: learn to make your food sound exotic even if it's the same old crap.