"Save your breath to cool your porridge" 16th century proverb
We’ve slipped into some bad breakfast habits with the kids in recent weeks with sugary cereals making their way into our larder. Everyone was also getting a little bored of hot porridge every other day during the recent cold spell. So it was a relief that, at the request of my four year old, we went back the other day to the summer favourite of Bircher Museli. My kids rather disgustingly call it ‘cold porridge’, but they love eating it and helping to make it the night before.
We’ve slipped into some bad breakfast habits with the kids in recent weeks with sugary cereals making their way into our larder. Everyone was also getting a little bored of hot porridge every other day during the recent cold spell. So it was a relief that, at the request of my four year old, we went back the other day to the summer favourite of Bircher Museli. My kids rather disgustingly call it ‘cold porridge’, but they love eating it and helping to make it the night before.
The key elements are oats, grated apple and raisins soaked in milk overnight in the fridge. You then get a creamy consistency that fine as it is or can be embellished with other dried or fresh fruits, nuts (ground in our case for the kids), yogurts, honey etc. It’s also good for two days, in fact like many foods, it’s actually better the next day. We added chopped dried apricots one morning and fresh blueberries the next. I first read about this in a Jamie Oliver’s ‘The Return of the Naked Chef’ about eight years ago. He called it ‘pukkolla’ with no mention of Bircher Museli. By co-incidence my husband simultaneously read an article on Bircher museli in one of the broad sheets and started making it. It’s made regular appearances on our breakfast table since.
