I live in Scotland. I live on a budget. It amazes me that porridge wasn’t the subject of my very first post here.
At the moment I’m eating porridge for one of my meals every day, and it’s really helping keep the cost of living down. I remember reading somewhere (though I can’t for the life of me remember where that ‘somewhere’ was) that muesli was invented to form an entire meal’s nutrition in one bowl: the cereal provides the fibre and carbohydrates, milk and nuts give protein and calcium, and the dried fruit does the rest. I realised that porridge, with some extras thrown in, would be equally nutritious.
Of course, the cheapest way to make porridge is using water, but to me that’s just one step too close to wallpaper paste. My mum swears by a mixture of half milk, half water. I use milk for all the liquid, unless I’m having a particularly poor week.
It’s simple to make: you just need twice the volume of water/milk as you do porridge oats. Put them in a pan and heat, stirring to prevent it sticking to the bottom of the pan. After about five minutes you’ve got your meal.
Ways I’ve been flavouring porridge recently include:
- 1tbsp rose water, 1tbsp flaked almonds, 2tbsp chopped dried dates
- 1 banana (chopped), 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ground ginger, 1tsp honey
- 2tbsp dried, sweetened blueberries (which have the added awesome effect of turning the porridge bright purple!)
- grated apple, pinch of cinnamon
At some point I’ll try some savoury porridge. If it turns out to be in any way edible I’ll post about it here.
