How Do You Porridge?

Porridge - what do you think of when you hear that word?  For me it means any hot, cooked grain cereal that one would eat - probably for breakfast.  Tho. I think porridge can be farina, cream of wheat, grits, oatmeal, etc...

My favorite porridge is oatmeal and I make something of a science of preparing myself a healthy and filling bowl of the stuff.  Here's what I do:

1.  Start with some healthy old fashioned rolled oats.  I prefer not to use the little packages of oats and not to use quick cooking oats and not to use flavored or pre-sweetened oats.  In the USA, I try to eat as much organic food as possible since giant chemical lobbies like the evil Monsanto company are allowed to put all kinds of crap in our food AND not even label it as such.  So, I use these organic oats:

2.  Measure out the amount of oats you wish to use.  In the USA our measurements are in volume rather than weight.  Just use any small cup, it doesn't even have to be a measurement cup and dump it in the pot.  Typically I use about 1/3 cup of oats, today I used 1/2 cup of oats since I just came back from a 5K run and didn't have breakfast before I went, I'm now really hungry!

3.  Using the same cup you used to measure the oats, fill it twice with water and add that to the oats in your pot.

4.  Cook the oats on medium heat until they are no longer watery or shiny.

5.  While the oats are cooking prepare the extras.  I love all the extras in my oatmeal.  I typically use whatever I have on hand.  Today it was 1/2 a banana.  I cut it up and put it in the bowl before the oatmeal.

6.  Then the berries (warning - in the USA use organic berries ONLY - non-organic berries are loaded with pesticides) which today were raspberries (my favorite berry) and strawberries.  I like to put half the berries under the oatmeal and the other half on top.

7.  When the oats finish their cooking, I dump them atop the bananas and berries.

8.  Then I put little clumps of Earth Balance (aka my butter) in the oatmeal.

9.  I chopped a few dates and added them.

10.  The rest of the berries were added to the top.

11.  The whole thing was finished with raw sliced almond and pecans.

Note:  I love a bit of brown sugar sprinkled on my oatmeal but since Jan 1 I am making a healthy attempt not to eat sugar or any added sweetener and also no white flour.

Ta dah!  This is one big, giant bowl of oatmeal!

AND... I managed to eat the whole thing.  Hopefully that will keep me full for a while.

Here are some more ideas for items to add to your oatmeal or porridge:

Raisins (aka sultanas), apples, walnuts, coconut, maple syrup, craisins, blueberries, blackberries, jam

How do you porridge?

Hurricane Balls - No Bake Cookies

So yesterday, we all had a sweet tooth, but I didn't have anything dessert-like in the house.  I surveyed the kitched and realized I was out of white sugar, stick butter, and much of anything in the way of chocolate other than some cocoa powder and 1/2 cup of semi sweet chocolate chips.

It was also humid and rainy and kind of hot - I didn't want to turn on an A/C OR an oven.  I wanted something sweet that required no baking.  I searched around on the internet but every no bake recipe called for something I didn't have - mostly white sugar.

I gave up.

I went to the kitchen and pulled out some dessert flavors...earth balance in the tub, powdered sugar, brown sugar, 1/2 cup chocolate chips, peanut butter, oats and some colored jimmies... hmmm..

I ended up with a most FANTASTICAL TREAT!  I will make them again and experiement with more variations.  Even a 5 year old could make these all alone.

1/2 cup peanut butter - in this case I used Jiff
1/2 cup confectioner sugar - the sweet stuff I had the most of
3/4 cup of rolled oats - uncooked
3/4 cup honey bunches of oats cereal (w/almonds - what I had on the shelf)
1-2T of milk (skim, could substitute anything wet that works for you)
1t of vanilla
1/2 cup chocolate chips (I used semi sweet)

I dumped it all into a bowl - yes, literally dumped and I didn't measure very accurately either.  I stirred it with a wooden spoon for about 1 minute until the wet was dry and the dry was wet.

I then scooped with a small spoon into my hand, pressed to make it ball-shaped and put it on a tray.

We ate them JUST like that - it actually tasted like eating chocolate chip oatmeal cookie dough -

It made about 2 dozen balls - everyone loved them.  They were gone before dinner time!  I will definately make them again!

YUM.  And by the way - if you're in the path of hurricane Irene (who is following the earth quake to the east coast and the mid-Atlantic areas) this will be your most beloved snack.  If you lose power, you can still make these, they require NO oven, stove or any kind of heat - I didn't even refrigerate them afterwards though they weren't around long enough to do so anyway.

Enjoy!  And by the way, if you grocery shop anywhere in Hurricane Irene's path, these ingredients will be far more readily available than flashlights and batteries which are apparently sold out EVERYWHERE in the Philadelphia area!