Skip to main content

Porridge for winter breakfast

We always have a problem with breakfast during the winter months.  For the rest of the year, we eat eggs for breakfast, one or two each, every morning.  But when the hens stop laying, we have to find something else to eat!  One thing that we have found is ok is the homemade baked beans that I posted about.  I also enjoy porridge/oatmeal (Farmer Pete prefers his WeetBix, the funniest thing is that WeetBix have an ad in New Zealand that goes "Kiwi kids .... are WeetBix kids" and the same ad in Australia says "Aussie kids .... are WeetBix kids", so I sing the Kiwi one to Pete when he's eating his WeetBix, hehe).  
soaking the oats in kefir
Anyway, I have been using the recipe in Nourishing Traditions and soaking the oats overnight with kefir or yoghurt.  One cup of oats to one cup of fermented dairy.  Then I put it on the stove and cook the porridge (supposed to add one cup of water at this stage, but sometimes I forget and it still works).  I find that the porridge cooks more quickly and the result is smoother due to the overnight soaking.

cooking the oats

I eat the porridge with milk or cream, a little brown sugar/rapadura and cinnamon.  One cup of oats lasts about 3 days of breakfast, as it is very filling, I just keep it in the fridge and heat it up as needed.

eating the porridge

What do you have for breakfast?
Labels:

Comments

  1. This Life of Mine...July 27, 2012 at 8:03 AM

    Sounds good. Our hens dont really have an off period. But we also have over 50!

    ReplyDelete
  2. JOCJuly 27, 2012 at 10:10 AM

    It's also incredibly good for you. My partner had a very high cholestorol level six weeks ago and the doctor wanted to put him on medication. So we dropped our meat intake, less butter and cheese (sob) and porridge for breakfast every day. Well after six weeks the level had dropped from 7.3 to 6.0. It's still too high but the doctor now says just keep on doing what you're doing. So Hurray for oats.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownJuly 27, 2012 at 6:00 PM

    Funnily enough, a friend was just telling me how she's having her Kefir with oatmeal. I've got to try it too!

    ReplyDelete
  4. city garden country gardenJuly 27, 2012 at 6:01 PM

    Yep that's definitely real porridge, looks delicious!! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. LindaJuly 27, 2012 at 8:14 PM

    My kids love porridge and it's such a good filling brekky for them. I find we go through a porridge stage, when they will eat nothing else, then suddenly they're sick of it so it's back to the Aussie Kid cereal though we use Vita Brits! We don't buy any other cereal. Sometimes if I'm supermum we make crumpets from scratch or pancakes. Oh.. and oats are supposed to be calming?

    ReplyDelete
  6. IanJuly 28, 2012 at 1:16 AM

    I love oats and eat them all the time. I'd love to try growing my own one day. Some of the Permaculture youtube clips from America mention a kind of oat called Hulless Oats that you can grow and process yourself (regular oats have very hard to remove husks that require industrial equipment to remove). But I have not been able to find anyone who sells them in Australia :(

    ReplyDelete
  7. Lrong LimJuly 28, 2012 at 11:21 AM

    Porridge does sound like a healthy menu for breakfast...

    ReplyDelete
  8. EmmaJuly 28, 2012 at 6:53 PM

    That ratio of 1c kefir to 1c Oats is easy to remember. I will tuck that away for future reference, which might be this week as Hubby forgot to get eggs and we are trying to only shop once weekly now - no top ups for things we forget. I've got 4 eggs in fridge so have some blender oat pancakes soaking ready for the morning.

    ReplyDelete
  9. KristyJuly 29, 2012 at 3:25 AM

    would it work to soak overnight in regular milk, do you think? Kefir is new to me but I would start the soaking and see how it went.

    Porridge is great. Just hard to get out of the 2y/o's hair because he doesn't wipe his hands on his clothes like most toddlers! lol cue the haircut. there went the curls!

    We're missing our chook eggs too and alternate between porridge/toast/cereal. Might be time for porridge tomorrow, thanks for your post. :)

    ReplyDelete
  10. UnknownAugust 17, 2012 at 9:29 AM

    hi all, found some info about making your own oat flakes:

    http://ahomegrownjournal.blogspot.com.au/2011/03/look-ma-i-made-my-own-oat-flakes.html

    ....and don't soak them in "normal" milk unless you leave them in the fridge. For this to work you need fermented dairy so you get some good bacteria breaking down the oats, use yoghurt, kefir or whey.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks, I appreciate all your comments, suggestions and questions, but I don't always get time to reply right away. If you need me to reply personally to a question, please leave your email address in the comment or in your profile, or email me directly on eight.acres.liz at gmail.com

Popular posts from this blog

Farm update - August 2017

Its been cold this month, and very nice to have the fire going every night.  Here's a photo of my boy in his cape, great for late night woofing at things.  Most of July we were either preparing for the butcher to come or putting meat away.  Its always a big job, but its only once a year, and its all done now.  My lovely neighbour came over to help, so it was fun to have the company and work together.  Taz was a champion once again as she helped us to move cattle in the yards ready to load for the market.  Gus is not at that level yet and had to stay home (he cries when he gets left behind, but he just gets in the way and scatters the cattle).  We have had a few sprinkles of rain here and there, but also plenty of cold nights, so the grass is mostly dead and dry, waiting for the warmer weather to revive our summer-active pasture. Gus in his cape Taz after she helped to move cattle Food and cooking It was all about beef in July and we are v...
2 comments
Read more

Cooking and eating beans

When I was growing up, my family never ate many dried beans, they just weren't something that was used much in NZ cuisine.  If I did eat beans, it was always from a can (and most likely baked beans).  And until recently I was still using beans from a can, but it can be difficult to get organic beans, and to find cans not lined with BPA.  Then I had an opportunity to buy some organic dry goods in bulk, so I bought 5kg of kidney beans, 5kg of adzuki beans and 5kg of chickpea (garbanzo beans).  I know, that is a lot of beans.  And then I didn't really know what to do with them!  Not just what dishes to put them in, but how to prepare them, I just didn't know what method to use. So I decided it was time to learn how to use all these beans that I bought, here's what I found out. I started with an excellent ebook called The Everything Beans Book , from Katie at Kitchen Stewardship, which has lots of bean recipes, but more importantly, an explanation of h...
12 comments
Read more

Guest post: Is there a place for power tools in the garden?

One of my regular readers and commenters offered to write a guest post about a horticulture course, its quite a funny read, with some serious insights into our technology obsession.  If you'd like to submit a guest post, email me at eight.acres.liz {at} gmail.com.  While I am always happy to share links back to your blog or website, this contributor preferred to remain anonymous.  I hope you enjoy their story.... -**-  -**-  -**-  -**-  -**-  -**-  -**-  -**-  -**-  -**-  -**-  -**-  -**-  -**- Just a few days ago our daily horticulture classes were interrupted by an invitation to review some new gardening gadgets. The idea was to open half a dozen of electric hand trimmers , test them and fill in some review about their goods and bads. As nothing is more dear to a student – even a “hort “ one - to escape routine and mess around till lunchtime, we opened the boxes and got down to business. What did we...
8 comments
Read more