Posts made in March 19th, 2013

Porridge

Posted on Mar 19, 2013 in Home Meals | 0 comments

Porridge is like congee made from oatmeal. We can cook it in water or milk, or both. Or Microwave it.

I first tried it more than 10 year ago at my husband’s father’s place. His father was eating it almost every morning. I thought he was eating warm cereal, but then he explained it wasn’t so I tried it. It wasn’t so good, or very tasty… My husband doesn’t like it so much, so we never had it at home.
Plain porridge has no salty or sugary taste. So you might mix some salt or syrup or nuts and fruits, whatever you like. Cinnamon apple would be great with it, I think!

After we came to Canada this time, somehow we had it at home. Did my husband buy it by mistake or did he intend to start eating it for health? Anyway, it was in our kitchen cupboard for a while. He’s still not so interested in eating it, so I started it today.

During the time I had morning sickness, I really craved congee and often made it in the morning. But I didn’t want to use too much salt (Japanese congee is often flavoured simply with salt), so I used a very small amount or tried to get flavour from other foods or broth like Cantonese congee.  I got used to less flavoured congee.

Thanks to that habit(?), I didn’t mind this flavourless porridge. I just added some walnuts. Quite delicious. It’s a grain congee, right? I usually make congee mainly out of white rice, so I thought it would be a nice change.

I tried to take a photo of my first porridge, but because our place is in the basement and has a lack of natural light, the photo didn’t look so good.

I borrowed a photo from a recipe website.

I just did an image-search for porridge. I see some of them with cinnamon powder on top, which is looking so yummy! Japanese kinako would also go well with it, even though it would be very difficult to get in Canada.

In western countries, we often see oat cookies, oat muffins, and so on at cafes and stores. Health conscious people must be eating oats quite regularly, I’m guessing. It lowers cholesterol and contains a lot of fiber, minerals and vitamins. Even though I’m low on cholesterol, I’ll eat more from now on for sure!

Edit:
I was reading Wiki, and now I realized that we’ve been eating muesli or granola cereals often, which are oatmeals mixed with dry-fruits and nuts, or sugar-coated (a little junkier though). So not a big deal… hahaha!