Perfect Poise, Perfect Life
Bring your body into balance and revolutionise your life
By Noel Kingsley
Publisher Hodder Mobius
AVAILABLE HERE
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Healthy, happy porridge
Being a Scot, I've always enjoyed a good bowl of porridge for breakfast and no time more than the present in these cold winter mornings. It's full of healthy fibre, wonderfully sustaining, low in colesterol, low GI and induces a lovely sense of euphoric hapiness! What a great way to start the day. Good organic oats are best and Jordan's are amongst the finest, and if you can dare make it with rice milk, you can enjoy a creamy and vegetarian version of porridge that's slightly sweet, and if seasoned with a little salt in the traditional Scottish manner makes it totally superb.
But I was heartily amused and interested today to discover that the Golden Spurtle World Porridge Making Championships are enjoying their thirteenth year in Carrbridge, Inverness-shire. The Championships only commence when the entrants have firstly enjoyed a 'wee dram' of whisky on the bridge and then the The Badenoch & Strathspey Pipe Band View image lead the procession of judges and competitors to their marks. Check out a traditional recipe.
Apparently the porridge should always be stirred in a clock-wise direction using only the right hand in order not to evoke the 'Devil'. Only a spurtle should be used, which is a wooden stirring stick without a moulded or flat end, hence the name of the Championships. Old customs also dictate that it should be eaten whilst standing and with a bone spoon. So there we are! Haven't got one of those, but I do stand, usually because I'm in a hurry.
2005 Winner Lynn Benge stirring her winning bowl of porridge.
