Doing porridge!

I forgot to mention earlier how in the last few months I have got seriously back into porridge, experimenting with a diverse range of nuts, dried fruits and anything else that will sit nicely in the sticky mix. I highlight this because I had a rather disturbing experience with porridge when as a young child my mother put butter milk in the mix instead of normal milk. I don't think there was anything sinister intended but it certainly left a bad taste (Frank McCourt, you know nothing about the miserable Irish childhood!). Anyway, the bad experience is now in the past and I am back enjoying a two bowls of porridge each weekend. Why only two? 'Well, I'd eat it all the time if it wasn't for the cleaning of the pot', I actually overheard a group of slightly inebriated pensioners in a pub in Belfast recently discussing porridge and this was what one of them remarked about the delicacy. I tend to agree, especially when one is living on their own. It's easier to live on pints of porter! But the hard work is worth it and I foresee porridge being a major part of my diet for years to come. And to think I might not be eating porridge at all if a few oat seeds had not been unintentionally carried along with other cultivated cereals into the more moist cental and northern parts of Europe a few thousand years ago.