First recipe - my everyday oats

Here goes - my first recipe online and it's (drumroll please...) porridge! And with terrible pictures to boot.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup Traditional Oats (aka "Rolled" Oats)
• 1 cup water or non-dairy milk or mixture
• 1/2 or whole ripe banana, mashed
• 1 heaped Tbsp ground linseed (flaxseed)
• 4-5 prunes, chopped
• non-dairy milk, extra to serve

 

Place oats and liquid(s) in saucepan and bring to the boil. While waiting, mash the banana with a fork in the bowl you are going to eat the porridge from. Chop the prunes and add to the bowl. Meanwhile, boil the oats over moderate heat until they thicken (around 5-8 mins). Once cooked, add to the banana and prunes. Top with ground linseed - I normally grind whole linseed in a spice/coffee grinder in largish batches and store it in a zip-lock bag in the freezer. Add extra non-dairy milk (fortified soy in my case) to taste and then mix everything around to get things to edible temperature. Gobble up!

Well, it's not exactly haute cuisine, but I find this breakfast delicious and can happily eat it day after day. The banana and prunes give good sweetness without adding sugar. Linseed (flax) is the best plant source of omega-3 fatty acids - they need to be ground to properly digest. I find they don't add anything substantial, either positive or negative, to the flavour of the porridge. Eaten as the ground whole seed, they also provide beneficial phytochemicals. We've been having oats for breakfast in winter for a few years now. I used to have brown sugar then converted to topping with prunes. Although its a recent addition, I like the way the mashed banana gives a sweet banana-y taste to every bite but keeps the consistency the same. Bananas are so expensive lately in Australia, that its a bit of a luxury! One last thing - by far the best supermarket oats are Carmen's (they also make delicious muesli and muesli bars). You wouldn't think there would be much difference between oats, but all the other brands we have tried are far inferior. Carmen's just seem to have the perfect texture - when cooked they keep a bit of chew.

So, there you go - my everyday vegan porridge. I think breakfast is the easiest habit to veganise. I used to have lactose-free dairy milk on porridge. It took a bit of experimentation to find my favourite soy milk - those with added vege oils I disliked the most and you really don't need to add refined oil to anything, the one I've settled on is also fortified with a few vitamins, including B12. I've never been a big fan of soy milk - it has a certain back of the palate unpleasantness, so at first that change was tough, but I soon stopped being so aware of it. The addition of mashed banana completely got rid of that taste, so that was a big win, and now I like this version of brekky more than what I ate as an omnivore.