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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?

Comments

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

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  2. 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.

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

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

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  5. 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?

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  6. 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 :(

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

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  8. 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.

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  9. 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. :)

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  10. 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.

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