Eating

Breakfast is a meal that I have never given much thought to since leaving home.  I always ate cereal of some sort or on the odd occasion something cooked such as egg or mushroom on toast.   For some time I have been thinking about alternatives, cereal is not a particularly healthy breakfast and it bears little resemblance to the grain it is made from being as it highly processed.  I made my own muesli for a while using grains bought from my local health food shop, but still the grains I was using were processed.

But what to eat instead.  I started to notice a number of articles in magazines and programmes on the radio talking about breakfast, the history of the meal, of cereal and what people now eat.  None of this provided any inspiration for what to eat as an alternative to cereal.  I started to make porridge, as I am unable to tolerate cows milk in its pure form, I can and do eat cheese and yogurt, I made it with water.  It does actually make a good porridge in my opinion, I now most people prefer it made with milk, I add fresh fruit chopped or mashed.  I also started to eat plain yogurt with fresh chopped fruit in it.  Then friends suggested making pancakes for breakfast, they all had their own recipes and preferences some involving large numbers of eggs, some with buckwheat flour which I sometimes struggle to get hold of, some which involved overnight soaking and one with oatmeal.  I took bits of each recipe and made up my own very simple one.  I call them pancakes but they are not like the thin pancake that you would traditionally make on pancake day, more a solid fritter type like a scotch pancake.  They are quick, easy, tasty and filling and I often make them camping.

Oatmeal Pancakes
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 egg

The night before mix the oatmeal and yogurt in a bowl, cover and leave overnight.  

In the morning add the egg and mix.
Heat a little butter in a frying pan and add heaped desert spoons of the mix and flatten slightly.
Cook until you can lift the pancake easily and turn over, you may need to add a little more butter, flatten slightly and cook for a further minute or so.
Continue cooking until all mix is used, you will need to add butter before cooking each batch.

The cup measurements are based on an American cup measure, but as long as the amounts are fairly equal it does not matter how much you use.  This quantity makes about six small pancakes.  If you want to make less I would reduce the quantity of oatmeal and reduce the yogurt quantity by more than the oatmeal otherwise your mixture will be very runny as you cannot reduce 1 egg very easily.  For this quantity of yogurt I have found you can increase to 3/4 cup of oatmeal if you want to make more pancakes.  I sometimes put a teaspoon of ground cinnamon in the mix.  I eat mine with chopped fresh fruit.