Oh…oh dear. Am I ready for this?

I’m still trying to treat my tongue gingerly after the unexpected burn from the ginger land mines it had the misfortune to provoke while eating Trader Joe’s Cranberry Gingerbread Granola earlier this week. But now the mysterious, faceless Trader Joe is serving up a steamy bowl of oats that contains not just single ginger or double ginger, but triple ginger!

That’s like, “you must be over 18 in order to eat this” levels of ginger. (Side note: I wouldn’t recommend searching for “triple ginger” with Google SafeSearch off. Things will get steamy for a whole different reason).

Regardless, it’s time to expose my tongue to all 3 degrees of ginger, even if that means exposing it to 3rd degree burns, too.

According to the ingredients, the promised ginger triforce consists of “organic crystallized diced ginger, organic ground ginger, and ginger extract.” I can only imagine the spicy destruction Ganondorf would reign down if he ever got his hands on these bad boys.

After emptying out a packet, the stuff looked pretty tame: nondescript oat pieces covered in a pale sienna (thank you, Crayola, for teaching me that color) powder and even paler shards of spice. The smell is floral and seductive; it’s what I imagine Jessica Rabbit would smell like.

Learning from every previous oatmeal mistake I’ve ever made, I slightly reduced the packaging’s recommended 2/3 cups of added water to avoid producing an oat-y monsoon in my microwave. After a stir and a minute’s worth of microwave zapping, I was left with a swelling mountain of moist oats that wafted beckoning tendrils of gingery steam into my nose like one of those cartoon pies on a windowsill.

Once it cooled, I eagerly dug in. Now I mentioned before how I’m more of a gingerbread fan than a straight up ginger connoisseur, but I found the balance of dense, earthy oats and warm ginger here to be quite perfect. Far from the overly spicy triad that I expected, the ginger here merely tickled my tastebuds with its wintry pleasantness. The texture is just right, also: there’s a comforting mush factor, but it’s has a palatable firmness, too that keeps it from melting into ginger soup in your mouth.

So while the savory oats and delicate ginger are on point, what’s missing here is sweetness; like the black coffee of the oatmeal world, this might wrinkle the nose of those looking for a rollicking Frappuccino. To make this into a more dessert-like treat that’s worthy of  accompanying your late night A Christmas Story marathon, I’d recommend sprinkling in some brown sugar or drizzling a touch of molasses on top.

Or if you’re like me and still have a nearly full box of TJ’s Cranberry Granola, that stuff makes for a perfect mix-in. The clusters make for a fun, crunchy textural contrast, and the cranberries like to diffuse their welcome, juicy essence throughout the rest of the oatmeal.

And that’s how, with a few minor adjustments, you can turn a regular gun into five guns a bowl of Trader Joe’s Organic Triple Ginger Instant Oatmeal from a soothingly spiced snack into a hyper festive smorgasbord of gingery delight.

Now I wonder if I could lovingly spread this stuff onto a gingerbread man like it’s lumpy, warm body butter…

The Bowl: Trader Joe’s Organic Triple Ginger Instant Oatmeal

The Breakdown: Makes for a mild, relaxing spice experience as it is, but this relatively unsweetened stuff works better as a base for all your other, sugarier leftover gingerbread ingredients.

The Bottom Line: 8 Google searches gone horribly, horribly wrong out of 10.