Anzac Day Porridge

For those of us here in Australia (and also in New Zealand, and various Commonwealth island nations), last Thursday the 25th of April was ANZAC Day. It is a national holiday and treated as a day of remembrance, much like November 11th (Remembrance Day, known as Armistice Day or Veteran's Day elsewhere in the world), although it initially began to commemorate the 12,000 members of Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who fell during the Gallipoli campaign in Turkey which began on the 25th of April in 1915.

Gallipoli was the first military campaign of WWI that sustained heavy Australian and New Zealand casualties, and around 2,000 Australians died on the first day. At the time that meant that for every 550 Australians, one person from a very narrow demographic (able-bodied young men) died in that single campaign. For a young nation, this campaign and the war in general went a long way to shape national identity.

People argue the relevance of a 98-year-old military failure in modern Australia, but personally that makes me quite angry when people disregard it all so easily. I'm not pro-war by any stretch of the imagination, but where you are today is a result of everything that went before, and I feel very blessed to live in Australia. Our military history is part of the nation's history, and so it is a part of me. I think people also underrate the sacrifices military personnel and their families made and make, and I don't think we should ever forget it.

The qualities the diggers at Gallipoli displayed became known as the Anzac Spirit. Things like courage, making the best of a bad situation, working hard, helping your mates out and a tendency to be a bit cheeky and push the envelope. I, for one, am more than happy for that to be a part of our national identity, and I fear that those qualities are slipping in today's society.

Anyway, you didn't come here for a rant. You came here for noms!

Normally I bake Anzac biscuits on Anzac Day. They are made of oats, flour, butter, coconut, golden syrup, coconut and sugar. Because there are no eggs or milk they keep very well, and legend has it that people would make them and send them to our troops serving overseas.

Knowing how untrustworthy I am around a batch of Anzacs (I have to have a little bit of the raw mix; a piping hot one which hasn't yet set that will inevitably burn my tongue; and a cooled one. Quality control, you see!) I decided to go with something on a smaller scale that could possibly be construed as wholesome, and invent myself some Anzac porridge.

No need to reinvent the wheel here! I just microwaved 3/4 cup of rolled oats mixed with (I think it was) half a cup of water for a minute or two, stirred it, mixed in 1/4c of milk and a heaped tablespoon of desiccated coconut and microwaved for another minute, then got a massive dollop of golden syrup on my spoon and drizzled it all over the top of the porridge.

Yum-oh!

You'll have to play with the times and the liquid quantities because every microwave is different. Be aware that I have had porridge literally explode all over the microwave, and I have also had it boil over and coat everything with a thick, sticky mess. Choose a deeper bowl and put less in it. If mine turns out dry I usually just add a little more milk and work it into the porridge.

I have heard disturbing rumours that other parts of the world don't have golden syrup, and this shocks and saddens me. The best way I can describe it (and in fact, I have cobbled some together like this) is a cross between honey and molasses, kind of a pale treacle. It is basically a cane sugar-based syrup that has a wee bit of bitterness to its sticky sweetness. Honey is too sweet and molasses is too bitter. I imagine a 3:1 mix might come close. Maybe. Or you could just Google it - no doubt someone has done the maths!

Sweet Enough Already

Remember when you were a kid, and your mum tried to make you eat Weet-Bix or Rice Bubbles without any sugar on top, and you whinged and whined and squirmed because it wasn't sweet enough and it was borrrrrrrrrring, even if it had chopped banana on top? (or was that just me? I loved nothing better than sprinkling heaps of sugar on my Rice Bubbles so that it formed a bit of a sugary, crusty raft, adrift in a sea of milk... no prizes for guessing why I was porky!).

Well anyway, the point I wish to make is that, at some point in relatively recent history (the last 3-4 years), my tastebuds have changed quite dramatically. For starters, I eat olives now. Yep, I do. It's true. I used to hate them with a passion, but now - provided they're the good quality ones, of course - I will scoff them down with reckless abandon. And I will also quite happily chow down on a bowl of steamed vegies and a serving of lean protein, and feel the most odd sensation of... well, I don't quite know what it is. It could be my body responding well to a food that is not high in fats or sugars or things that it has to really battle to process. It could be that I enjoy the taste. Or it could also be a liberal serving of Smug.

Similarly, a couple of years ago I realised that Weet-Bix with a wee sprinkling of All-Bran, served with either chopped banana or a spoonful of sultanas, was actually quite naturally sweet. And something about it pleased me and made me very happy of a morning. Perhaps it was the feeling of virtue for having made a healthy start to my day. Perhaps it was that my blood sugar wasn't all over the place, or knowing that it would be a good few hours before the urge to snack reared its ugly head. Who knows. But at around the same time I began to recognise that the natural sweetness of fruits and spices is actually enough to balance the sourness of natural (in this case, home-made goat's milk) yoghurt.

And that's how I used my yoghurt. The first two serves were with grated apple, a few sultanas and a sprinkling of each of cinnamon and ground cloves. What can I say - I'm a sucker for the ol' apple-cinnamon-cloves combination. If I were on Death Row, I would want steaming hot apple crumble with a crunchy top as my final meal, served with a liberal helping of vanilla icecream. And while we're at it, also some double cream. Because Death Row calories don't count! Actually, it would be my final dessert of my final meal, because I would also need to eat corned beef one last time before passing into the Hereafter. With mashed potato, of course.

That wasn't weird at all, was it.

And this most recent serve included chopped apple (because I didn't feel like cleaning the grater again!), pear and banana, topped with my goat-ghurt and the aforementioned spices. The sweetness of the fruit was enough for me. I guess I really am all grown up!

Note - this was my Sunday breakfast in bed, as evidenced by the background, and took it as an afterthought using my new iPhone (squee!). And the book upon which my breakfast rests is 50 Shades of Grey. No, I didn't purchase it myself (I'm still wading through my pile of unread books as part of my 101 Things challenge so I'm not allowed to buy new books) but yes, I'm having a bit of trouble putting it down. I'm not sure exactly how I will go about reviewing it, considering the content is fairly graphic and involves SPOILER ALERT some fairly k!inky stuff (the ! is so this site isn't blocked by your workplace's firewall!), but it's... I dunno, a little bit Twilight, in that it's not that well written but if you accept it for what it is then it's not so bad. Let's just say that it may surprise you!

Returning from that segue, you should definitely try grated apple and sultanas with natural yoghurt and a bit of cinnamon and nutmeg on top. I first tried it in a hostel in Austria, and initially I was horrified by the fact I had apparently inadvertently served myself a whopping bowl of unsweetened natural yoghurt, but then my tongue acclimatised and registered the apple juice and all was well in the world :)