Unprocessed Breakfast - Porridge

It's so easy to eat healthy these days, you really don't have any other excuse than well, laziness, lack of interest and being so detached from your body (as well as preparing meals for your family) that feeding yourself hardly matters anymore. Of course, all of these negative feelings are a direct result of the onslaught of poisons and toxins that we have been subjecting our bodies (and minds) to all along.

So, what to do here? The easy solution is to fall back on an old standby, often it is the older variations of meals that still contain some form of nutrients for our bodies (and growing children) as well as allow us to stop and think about what we are choosing to eat.

Breakfast is an important meal (on the days that you are eating), however I have never felt that it has the significance or distinction of being anything other than the first meal you eat after your 'fast' is broken. Technically, this meal then could be eaten at 2 O'clock in the afternoon, and if you or your children want to have a bowl of hot porridge, anytime is perfect.

Porridge is easy to cook - literally you just add water to the oat flakes, there are several different kinds of oats on the market (jumbo, pin head, raw, rolled, flaked, quick oats, Scottish, steel cut - the list goes on!) and they take just minutes to prepare. 

Porridge oats with cinnamon, butter and pinch of salt

In case you have forgotten how to cook oats, this comes from the panel of Flahavan's Organic Porridge Oats - for 1 cup of oats, use 2 1/2 cups cold water and cook for several minutes while stirring constantly as you bring the mixture to a boil. As it is cooking I like to add in some cinnamon, a dollop of goat's butter and a pinch of salt (call me old fashioned) and the children like the job of stirring as it comes to a boil.

Cooked porridge in pot

Cooking a meal for your breakfast also allows for some level of creativity - you can add interesting tastes and flavours to a bowl of porridge to enhance it's appeal while also making it more nutritious. We like to add homemade jam, nuts, seeds, fruit and the children like a splash of goat's milk to cool it down. But the list is endless, while some people like it plain.

Ready to eat with cinnamon, banana, goat's milk and strawberry jam

The most important part of your breakfast today could be the fact that you ate something organic, local, unprocessed and cooked at home, the way you like it. It doesn't take long (3 -5 minutes) to cook, you can add extras or not (I also like a piece of toast with my breakfast) and children will eat this when there  are no other choices on offer. 

This sure beats sugary cereal from a box with a host of different chemicals which, by the way, studies have shown to contain more sugar than eating a pile of chocolate chip cookies for breakfast. These products have been labelled in the food industry as 'breakfast candy' (along with sugar comes appalling amounts of sodium, food dyes, corn syrup and added 'fibre') with over 80 brands which are specifically marketed towards children. 

This is not nutrition, this is child abuse!  

Good god, what have we come to.....

April