Porridge …. a bit of history …. and a riposte to a chum

Now I have to say over the decades porridge has never really shaken my tree.

Today I had porridge, 2026

Like our dad my go to breakfast was and is toast left to cool and eaten with lashings of butter and ginger marmalade*.

During the 1970s I flirted with muesli bought from The Eighth Day on Oxford Road and enlivened with various nuts and dried fruit.

But I am a child of the 1950s and this wonder dish was supplanted by a return to toast which has remained breakfast for the last five decades, opening me up to that accusation of being far too adventurous.

Lately I have broken out, eaten avocado on toast with salad and last month started on porridge which was less out of a preference and more because there was a heap of oats left over and I was always brought up not to waste food.

And so began the adventure.

Father always maintained you ate it with salt not sugar, a harp back to our Scottish past where they do things differently.

That was never going to happen; however, the spirits of our ancestors might stir and rage from the east Highlands, I cook it in water with the addition of sugar, bananas and blueberries with a dash of cream at the end, making it a tad fattening, outrageously indulgent and fully acceptable for man heading towards his 77th birthday. 

Historically the oats version has been eaten for at least 5,000 years as evidenced from the bodies of long dead Neolithic bog bodies found in Central Europe and Scandinavia.  So, am I not arguing with them, although I doubt they put all the sweet stuff in.

Yesterday I had ginger marmalade, 2026

But Dad with his buttered toast flew in the face of this collective, cultural and gastronomic history and I must confess that porridge remains just one of the breakfasts I dip into, sitting beside the said toast, as well as croissants and those super healthy avocados.

Of course there are other breakfasts available.

Sugar Puffs, 1958

Over the years I have done a multitude of veggie breakfsts, but long ago went off eggs and have now moved away from pretend sausages, which makes the veggie breakfast limited.

Those of us born in the first half the last century might sill embrace those sugary cereals but alas they no longer come with the occasional free gift.

Surgar Puffs variously went for the detective set which vied with small coloured racing cars, and those divers which with the addition of a small quanity of baking powder could be dropped into a fish bowl and sent out bubbles replcating the oxygen bubbles of a real diver.

But we didn't have a fish bowl and when the diver was dropped into the sink he never consented to blow bubbles.

Back in the 1940s the Ministry of Food was keen on advocating a substantial breakfast.  

In 1946 in their leaflet number 33 on Suggestions for Breakfast along with porridge were ideas using "National or Wholemeal Bread for potato puffs, cheese and vegetable cutlets, fried cheese sandwiches, potato fadge with fried bacon, fried herrings and poached kippers". 

Everday breakfasts, 1946

Leaving me just to reflect its all a rather silly indulgent post prompted really by a Facebook chum who had also tried a bowl of porridge with bananas and blue berries.

Pilchards, grilled, pilchards fried ... but always pilchards, 1946

He wasn’t impressed but perhaps it was all in the mix.  

After painful failures I discovered the best combination was one-part oats to two parts water, slow cooking, heaps of stirring and that dash of cream.

And I rather think I will stick with it after the bag of oats is finished.

So, porridge …. a bit of history …. and a riposte to a chum.

And if the chum is online and has read the story maybe he will pass judgement on Fried Pilcards on Fried Bread.

We shall see.

Location; our kitchen

Pictures; a bowl of Andrew’s porridge, an empty jar of Ginger Preserve, 2026, and a box of Sugar Puffs, 1958, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Suggestions for Breakfast, Leaflet 33, the ABC of Cooking, issued by the Ministry of Food, 1946

*And yes it was never ginger maramalde but ginger preserve, but back then that was what we called it, oblivious to the fact that marmlade "is a sweet, tangy fruit preserve made from the juice and peel of citrus fruits boiled with sugar and water". Marmalade, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmalade