Fast and Easy Two-Ingredient Oatmeal Cookie Recipe

Did you try the fast and easy two-ingredient bread recipe? Or are sweets more your thing? In that case, you will love this super quick two-ingredient recipe for making oatmeal cookies! 

All you need is two ripe bananas and and one cup of quick oats. 

Mix them together and spoon them out onto a greased baking sheet, then bake at 350 degrees F for 15-20 minutes (start watching at 15). 

If you have some dried fruit like raisins or cranberries or some chopped walnuts or pecans, you can mix those in, too (it won't be two ingredients any more, but I promise not to tell)! 

Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/cookies-in-tilt-shift-lens-4182677/

Improve Your Vocabulary: Roots, Part One

It’s All Greek to Me

Now that you’ve read the first three steps to building a better vocabulary (What? You haven’t? Well, here’s step one, here’s step two, and here’s step three. I'll wait!) and you have committed the prefixes I gave you to memory, let’s improve your vocabulary further by learning a few new roots.

These root words are all from the Greek language, which has given us a surprising number of words, considering the Teutonic and Latinate nature of our English language. Greek roots figure very strongly in certain fields, specifically that of medicine, so it would certainly benefit us to become acquainted with them. Even if you don’t want to become a doctor, it wouldn’t hurt to know what they’re talking about, now, would it? You might be watching one of those medical dramas and suddenly realize it’s not all gibberish anymore! Let’s learn some new root words now:

First, we have anthrop or anthropo, meaning man or mankind, or in less sexist terms, human or humankind (although sometimes it specifically means man, as in male human). Some examples of common words using this root are philanthropy, which literally translates as “love of [fellow] man”, and which we understand as “charity” or “charitable endeavor”. Of course, if you love your fellow man, it is easy to be charitable to him. Anthropomorphism, blending the root for “[hu]man” with the Greek root morpho, meaning “change”, is defined as the tendency to give animals human characteristics, such as similar personalities or opinions to those of people. Literally, it would translate as “change to human”. The word misanthrope combines anthro with the common prefix “mis”, meaning “not” or “against”, to describe a person who is averse to his fellow men—a hermit or antisocial type.

Another useful Greek root is arch, not as in a curving parabola such as the St. Louis Arch, but arch pronounced as “ark”, as in archangel, archaeology or archaic. This root means “first” in two separate ways. First temporally, as in “ancient” (which we see in archaeology, “study of the ancient”, and archaic, literally “old” or “ancient”, but more commonly used to mean “outdated”). Also it means first hierarchically, as in “chief” (hence archangel, meaning a chief or primary angel—Michael, Gabriel and Uriel are archangels in the Christian tradition). And didja notice I also sneaked hierarchically in there, too?

Last but not least, we have chron, a Greek root meaning “time”. The term chronic means “over time”, as in a chronic illness; chronology, literally “study of time”, is more accurately defined as “timekeeping” (the chronometer, or “time-measure”, on your wrist or office wall is a facet of this), and the prefix syn, meaning “same”, combines with our root to give us synchronize, which as we know from spy movies (“Synchronize your timepieces, gentlemen!”) means to operate at the same time, or “in synch”. Yep, it’s the same place lip-synching comes from.

Now, memorize these, use them in your speech and writing, and don't worry, there will be more roots to come soon!

Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-of-a-greek-flag-11452708/

The Books List, Part 13: 20 Books I Would Recommend Reading, 5 Books I Wouldn't, and 50 from my Reading List

 

Ah, spring! Time for sunshine and rain and flowers and loopy, loopy weather. Nothing will brighten a rainy April shower like curling up with a good book. I bet you'll forget the weather completely! Without further ado, here's another Books List. Maybe you'll find your new favorite below!

My likes/loves: These are books that entertained me, moved me, taught me things, made me think, inspired me, and that I would heartily recommend. They are not ranked – they are merely in the order in which I read them.

1. Infidel – Ayaan Hirsi Ali

2. The Great Train Robbery – Michael Crichton

3. The Stories of Eva Luna – Isabel Allende

4. Eat to Live – Dr. Joel Fuhrman

5. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark – coll. By Alvin Schwartz

6. More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark – coll. By Alvin Schwartz

7. Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones – coll. By Alvin Schwartz

8. Draw Your Weapons – Sara Sentilles

9. Sam's Letters to Jennifer – James Patterson

10. How to Learn Any Language – Barry Farber

11. Where the Sidewalk Ends – Shel Silverstein

12. Year of Yes – Shonda Rimes

13. Confessions of a Carb Queen – Susan Blech

14. Cows on Parade in Chicago – Mary Ellen Sullivan

15. Psychology – Carol Wade and Carol Tavris

16. Your Head is a Houseboat – Campbell Walker

17. F*ck Your Diet and Other Things My Thighs Tell Me – Chloé Hilliard

18. The Witches Are Coming – Lindy West

19. Shrill – Lindy West

20. Race Records – Wendy Hayton

My meh/yuck list: Did not find these appealing for any number of reasons – some were boring; some had an interesting subject but did not do it justice; some were flat-out terrible. All simply left me cold in some way. Although I am likely to read multiple books by authors I like (you will see a lot of Dean Koontz, Jonathan Kellerman, Margaret Atwood, Charles deLint and Toni Morrison), I do not excuse those authors when they write a book I didn't like, so they might just show up here, as well.

1. The Elements of Style – William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White

2. The Riddle and the Knight – Giles Milton

3. The Story of O – Pauline Réage

4. White Noise – Don deLillo

5. Be More Wonder Woman – Cheryl Rickman

My Reading List: these are books I haven't read yet, so I don't have a reaction for you. However, I could semi-recommend them, based on the reasons they made it onto my list:

1. They were on one of those “100 Greatest Books” lists;

2. They are other books written by authors I really enjoy; or

3. I read a review, and it sounded like something I'd like.

#1 can be a bit hit-or-miss; #2 is almost (but not always) foolproof for me (but maybe not for you), and #3 usually works out pretty well, as it's a combination of the first two. As always, your results may vary, but consider them suggestions. These may tend to come in chunks of stuff by author (apologies).

1. Fools of Fortune – William Trevor

2. Forever a Stranger – Hella Haasse

3. Fortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez Galdós

4. Foucault's Pendulum – Umberto Eco

5. Foundation – Isaac Asimov

6. Franny and Zooey – J. D. Salinger

7. Fruits of the Earth – André Gide

8. Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels

9. Fury – Salman Rushdie

10. G – John Berger

11. Gabriel's Gift – Hanif Kureishi

12. Gargantua and Pantagruel – François Rabelais

13. Giles Goat-Boy – John Barth

14. Giovanni's Room – James Baldwin

15. Girl with Green Eyes – Edna O'Brien

16. Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis

17. Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner

18. Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter Handke

19. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut

20. Gone – Lisa Gardner

21. Good Omens – Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

22. Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys

23. Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood

24. Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake

25. Gösta Berling's Saga – Selma Lagerlöf

26. Great Apes – Will Self

27. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

28. Grimus -Salman Rushdie

29. Group Portrait with Lady – Heinrich Böll

30. Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsun

31. Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe

32. Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker

33. Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton

34. Hard Times – Charles Dickens

35. Harriet Hume – Rebecca West

36. Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd

37. He Knew He Was Right – Anthony Trollope

38. Hebdomeros – Giorgio di Chirico

39. Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow

40. Her Privates We – Frederic Manning

41. Herzog – Saul Bellow

42. Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud

43. High Rise – J. G. Ballard

44. Homo Faber – Max Frisch

45. House Mother Normal – B. S. Johnson

46. House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski

47. Housekeeping – Marilynne Robinson

48. How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman

49. How It Is – Samuel Beckett

50. How the Dead Live – Will Self

That's all for now; hope you find these lists useful as you think about things you might like to read. If you want more, more, more, you can find the previous lists at these links:

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-books-list-part-one.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-books-list-part-two.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-books-list-part-three.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-books-list-part-four.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-books-list-part-five.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-books-list-part-six.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-books-list-part-seven.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-books-list-part-eight.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-books-list-part-nine.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-books-list-part-10.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-books-list-part-11-20-books-i-would.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-books-list-part-12.html

Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/book-and-lighted-candle-near-glass-window-13945391/

Bad Restaurant Experience? Here’s How to Save It

 

We've all had the unfortunate experience of something going wrong during a restaurant visit. Whether it be a mistake with the check, poor service, or bad food, you may feel like your meal—or even your evening—has been ruined. However, there's a way to save your bad dining experience: the secret, believe it or not, is to complain. Here’s how:

Speak Up. If you have an immediate concern—a problem with your food, for example, or missing utensils, condiments or items ordered—let your server know immediately so that they can fix things. Missing items can be fetched quickly, and if a meal needs to be cooked further, recooked or replaced, the sooner this can be done, the less the meal is disrupted. It boggles the mind how frequently a server will hear “everything’s fine”, and then return later in the meal to see a largely untouched entrée and a customer who only complains when the server, noting this, asks if there was a problem. By that time, it’s useless to try to give the diner another meal, as their companions are finished.

If you have a problem the server can’t help you with (poor service, for example!), seek out the floor manager. If you don’t wish to discuss this while at the server’s table, you can certainly wait until the meal is over and then ask for the floor manager at the host stand. You may find this hard to believe, but managers want to hear if there is a problem—after all, the alternative is that they will lose you as a customer and that, in addition, you may complain to your friends about the restaurant and cause them not to go, either. Most managers have received training on how to communicate with dissatisfied customers and will appreciate your feedback.

Be Nice! Even if you have a legitimate beef, please be courteous. Chances are pretty good that the mistake was completely unintentional (your server may have another table that keeps thwarting their attempts to check on you, or the food you ordered went in right after a large party ordered) or not the fault of the person you are addressing about it (your server does not cook the food or set the prices). If you remain polite and sympathetic, the server or manager will feel much more disposed toward making things right for you and even going beyond your expectations.

Be Specific. It’s not really helpful to respond to the “How is/was everything?” with “Terrible!” If you want anybody to be able to help you, you have to specify the problem: Is your steak cooked to the wrong temperature? Are you sitting in a chilling draft from a blasting a/c? Did your server disappear near the end of the meal and you couldn’t get your check? Did ALL these things happen? If the restaurant doesn’t find out exactly what went wrong, how can they possibly fix it? If you cannot cite specifics, you will look like someone who is unreasonably dissatisfied with everything in life, and it’s hard to take complaints from such a person very seriously.

Have Realistic Expectations. Do not expect a remedy out of all proportion to the suffering. If the steak is medium rare instead of medium well, allow the kitchen to cook it further. If you ordered fries and receive a baked potato, your server should fetch your fries promptly (on a separate plate, allowing you to start eating the rest of your meal). Mistakes happen, and simple mistakes should have simple solutions; you can’t expect your meal to be comped over something small. However, if something happens that adversely affects your dining experience, you should have the expectation that the restaurant will try its hardest to make it up to you. Slipshod or unfriendly service or hair or a foreign object in your food can truly ruin an otherwise nice meal, and you are certainly within your rights to expect that your meal, or at least the affected entrée, be comped, or that a gift certificate for your next visit is offered. In the case of smaller mistakes, such as an exceptional delay in receiving food or a host forgetting to tell your server that you have been seated in her section, it would be appropriate for the manager to offer something a bit smaller, like a round of drinks (if local law permits) or complimentary dessert or appetizers. Most chains have a sliding scale of what managers can offer, depending upon the transgression.

Accept Loot Graciously. Some people find that if they ask for help with something that’s gone wrong (receiving the wrong food, for example), not only does the server fix the problem, but the manager hurries over to offer something extra, like dessert or a gift card. You may wish to decline, not wanting to look as though you are trying to get a freebie, but if the manger does offer you something to make it right, you really should accept, even if you didn’t mean to cause any fuss. Everyone will feel better if you do, especially the manager, who would rather have you leave with a feeling that you got more, not less, than you deserved. Happy dining!

Image credit: pexels.com/photo/woman-in-gray-sweater-looking-pensive-sitting-on-a-dining-table-6603138/

Fast and Easy Two-Ingredient Bread Recipe

I was looking at my Facebook memories and found a video I had shared to my wall about a recipe for bread rolls using only two ingredients, self-rising flour and Greek yogurt. The man who made the video had seen a video posted by someone else and wanted to test it for himself. Looks like the bread came out great! I said I wanted to try it, and then I totally forgot! But now I've written down the recipe so I will remember, and I'll share it with you:

2 cups of self-rising flour (if you don't have self-rising flour, you can add 1 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon of salt for each cup of flour) 1 3/4 cups of Greek yogurt (I guess plain, but maybe flavors would be good to try) Mix it into a dough, then separate into sections and roll each section into a ball. Place on baking sheet and bake at 350 F for 25 minutes. They should be golden brown and have a soft, dense consistency like scones. Have you ever made bread like this? I love simple recipes. Here's another one for oatmeal cookies: https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2026/04/fast-and-easy-two-ingredient-oatmeal.html

Photo by Gu Ko: https://www.pexels.com/photo/freshly-baked-biscuits-on-wooden-plate-36903813/

Improve Your Vocabulary in Three Easy Steps: Step Three

 

The Shortcut to Improving Your Speech and Writing

Click here to read first step

Click here to read second step

Last time, we discussed Step Two, which was: Reference, like dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc. But to spare you from having to run for a dictionary every time a new word pops up, you can save a lot of time by getting a handle on Step Three:

3. Roots. The cool thing about roots, which are word parts, is that they are like master keys. I’ll explain: When you come across a word you don’t know, you’re running into a locked door, in a way, right? And when you look up the definition for that word, you are finding the key that unlocks that door, and as long as you know that word, the door stays unlocked. Good, but I’m sure you see this problem coming a couple of blocks away: there are a lot of doors. All those hundreds of thousands of words that people use—there are going to be quite a few we don’t know. Do we memorize tons of definitions? Well, the good news is that we can—we certainly have already. Heck, we’ve memorized an astonishing amount by the time we’re toddlers, haven’t we, and can babble on about an impressive array of topics and even make up stories.

But the better news is this: Instead of adding keys to our already huge, clanking janitor’s key ring, we can borrow the super’s key ring, with the master keys. The master keys are the roots, together with other word parts. Here is a basic definition of word parts:

Root: Basic meaning. Sometimes a word consists of just the root, such as flex or script, but more often you will see the root appearing with additions, of:

Prefix: Word part placed in front of the root, for example:

    (dis)trust, (re)work, (mis)spell

    More than one prefix may appear:

    (dis)(en)chant, (in)(con)gruent

Suffix: Word part placed after the root, for example:

    mut(able), tenta(tive), funda(ment)

    More than one suffix may be used:

    beauti(ful)(ly), vent(ure)(some)

Of course, both prefixes and suffixes may be used:

(ir)(re)place(able), (in)nate(ly)

Words that are formed by adding various prefixes and suffixes are called derivatives. Here are the many derivatives of the root JECT, “to throw”:

project             eject             interjection

projected         ejected         conjecture

projecting        ejecting        conjectural

projection        ejection        reject

projectionist    ejector          rejection

projector          interject        rejected

projectile         interjected

Words can also be formed by putting two roots together. For example:

thermo (heat) + meter (measure) = that which measures heat

demo (people) + cracy (rule) = rule by the people

In my next series of articles, I will introduce you to a variety of prefixes, suffixes and roots from Greek and Latin, two of the most influential languages on English. Here are some Greek prefixes to get you started:

a, an – without  - amoral, atheism, anaerobic

anti, ant – against  - antibiotic, antisocial, antagonist

cata – down  - catalyst, catapult

dia – across, through, thoroughly  - diagonal, diaphanous, diaspora

epi – on, upon  - epidermis, epitaph, epitomize

ec – out, outside - eccentric, ecstasy, ectomorph

eu – good, pleasant  - eugenics, euphony, euthanasia

hyper – over, excessive  - hyperbole, hyperactive, hypertrophy

hypo – under, less than  - hypodermic, hypothesis, hypoglycemia

para, par – alongside  - parallel, paraphrase, paranormal

peri – around, near  - perigee, periphery, periscope

syn, sym, syl, sys- together, with  - syllable, symposium, syntax, system

If you are unfamiliar with any of the demonstration words given, you know what to do: Look ‘em up and write ‘em down!

Here's the next set of roots to learn: https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2026/04/improve-your-vocabulary-roots-part-one.html

Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/brass-colored-keys-333838/

Improve Your Vocabulary in Three Easy Steps: Step Two

The Shortcut to Improving Your Speech and Writing

In my prior article, we learned the first step to improving one’s vocabulary: Reading. This time, we will discuss what you should do when context isn’t enough to help you suss out a word’s meaning, or when you want to know a little more about the word and how to use it. Step Two is:

2. Reference. You know what reference is—it’s those books you can’t check out of the library, right? The encyclopedia, the dictionary, the World Book (do they still make those? I'm old). Well, you can’t run to the library every time you read something new, but you could get a good dictionary for your home. Some dictionaries are definitely much better than others. I’d skip anything that said “quick reference”, for example. Dictionaries that refer to themselves as “college dictionaries” are a pretty good bet. The best dictionaries, like the legendary Oxford English Dictionary, even have an etymology for each word- where it originally comes from, the form it originally took, if it has had a different meaning at some point, et cetera. (Like “et cetera”, for example, which is Latin for “and things”. But more on that later.) And of course, you can always look up words on your phone -- be careful of trusting the AI summaries, though - they aren't that good, yet. Better to click the link and get it straight from Merriam Webster's mouth. 

Whether you are reading at home or are out and about, carry a notepad with you and make a note of any words you run across to look up later. If you hear someone use a word you don’t understand, you can ask the person what it means. If you’re embarrassed about that, you can write it down in your pad to look up later. Even if they’ve told you what it means, you should look it up later, anyway, just to be sure they were right in the first place. You might also learn more about it, like alternate meanings, spellings, and more. I do want to emphasize one thing about using reference to learn vocabulary words: one of your most powerful tools for learning is that little pad or notebook. When you look up a word and its definition, no matter whether you are using printed reference or the internet, write them down.

Again, let me stress this: write them down, the word and its definition. It has been shown that the physical act of writing something down stimulates the formation of a memory of that information. Just think of all the times you have written something important down, like a phone number, and then found sometimes you could remember it without even looking. But if you didn’t write it down? That phone number is gone, honey! And you can listen closely in class, but if you have notes, it’s a lot easier to study for that test, right? You can fill a textbook with yellow highlighter, but it still won’t be as strong as writing it out. Typing out the word to google it or saving the definition to the Notes function on your phone is not the same and doesn't make that strong pathway like actually writing the words. 

Okay, now remember when I mentioned that some dictionaries tell you what form the word may have originally taken? And do you also remember when I mentioned that when you are learning a foreign language, you may note similarities in word formations? That brings us to the third step…which we will discuss next time! 

Step 3: https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2026/03/improve-your-vocabulary-in-three-easy_28.html

 Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/dictionary-text-in-bokeh-effect-267669/