Wednesday morning – Oatlahoma

Porridge du Wednesday

Plenty of fibre!

Ingredients: porridge oats, water, the ability to operate a microwave, use of opposable thumbs,

1.       Unearth the porridge oats from the cupboard.

2.       Notice that the packet is still depressingly full, despite the fact I’m sure I’ve been eating porridge every day for approximately all of my life.

3.       Pour a very small quantity of oats into a bowl.

4.       Decide even that looks like a bit too keen a quantity.

5.       Cover it in a small amount of water so it looks like an unblended lentil soup.

6.       Microwave the entire mixture until it looks ready to stick bricks together.

You know that bit in Groundhog Day where Bill Murray wakes up and lives the same day over and over again? (I believe that bit is known as “the entire film”). Writing about the porridge in the morning is starting to feel a little bit like that. It’s quite tricky trying to write six hundred words about a food that tastes of nothing.

Challenge accepted.

The wonderful thing is knowing the incredible journey that has gone in to every ingredient (all both of them) in the bowl, and how the ultimate trajectory of their voyage is to be united in the bowl for a meal which transcends both.

Firstly, the humble oat plant. Grown on a plant in a warm climate, it has dalliances with water in helping it to grow and reach its full potential. When it hits its prime, it is harvested and begins an adventure that takes it through processing, packaging and multiple forms of transportation to arrive at the shop, where it waits to be purchased by customers eager for its excellent sources of protein and dietary fibre.

Meanwhile, the water cycle, which has taken place for millions of years and sees water fall on the ground, seep into the ocean, evaporate up into the atmosphere and fall again, culminates in this instance in the arrival of water to a reservoir, where it sits, desperately curious about its destination this time. Will it be used for a bath or shower? Will it be used in washing and cleaning? Will it simply fall straight down the drain in favour of superior water coming after it?

And these long-travelling oats and experienced 175ml of water finally unite in a bowl in the middle of England. Married by circumstance, and yet both build the other up in new ways. Oats are small, and yet with the addition of water they swell up to far beyond their purpose. Water is a wet liquid (traditionally), and yet the oats turn it into something with consistency and solidity. Neither has much of a taste to itself, and yet when combined, two nothings collide and make a greater nothing, something that has every potential to be the base of a delicious meal and yet squanders that in the pursuit of something greater.

Yes, the easy path this new-found “porridge” could take would be for the ingredients to enhance each other’s taste – but surely the nobler journey it could take would be to diligently persist in tastelessness, resisting every natural impulse to add flavour and instead cling to that which brought them together in the first place, that wonderful bond of bland which their disparate expeditions share.

(Goodness, I’ve still got 200 words to go).

And yet these star-crossed lovers, this all-too-briefly-united double act, must only spend the shortest of time together. Piece by piece, lump by lump, oats and water journey together into the abyss of the human body, navigating their way through dispensing energy and nutrients as they go, before rejoining the water cycle in the cistern and ultimately joining fertilizer. So this round of oats and water departs, so that future generations may use water again, and that next seasons crops may benefit from the remaining harvests of this one. The beautiful cycle repeats and repeats, so that energy is merely borrowed, not kept.

And as it is dispensed from the body, what used to be porridge turns into the kinetic energy that powers the typing fingers, the (minimal) electrical energy in the brain transmitting words from nerve impulses, the other functions in the body that simply allow it to continue. And thus, this unassuming, insipid sludge generates instead the highest function known to man – the blog post of a hungry twenty-something with way too much time on his hands.

That’s 564 words, but I think that’s still relatively impressive. It probably also gives a bit of an insight into my current mental stability. Next thing you know I’ll be writing a poem about porridge. Or maybe a song…

Porridge, made with Troubled Water

When you’re hungry, not so full,

When you want food to eat, ‘cause you’re miserable.

The food around, is not enough

And flavour can’t be found:

Like porridge, made with troubled water,

I’ll eat with a frown;

Like porridge, made with troubled water,

I will chew it down.

When you have some oats, when you want a meal

But you want food that will, often congeal

I have a thought, that’s up to snuff

Which will your fears confound:

Eat porridge, made with troubled water

Really go to town!

Eat porridge, made with troubled water

That’s my favourite noun.

Eat up all that food, nice and bland,

There’s more where that came from, it tastes like sand.

Looks like it too, it may taste rough,

But it’s a fine compound!

That porridge, made with troubled water

It’s not a let-down

That porridge, made with troubled water,

Hey, nervous breakdown…

Maybe I should pursue a food-based record deal…

Note: As part of my Mean Bean challenge I will be writing about my experiences each day – the more money raised, the more I write. At the time of writing, people have generously donated £300, which means I’m aiming at 1,700 words per day (excluding the ones in this explanatory paragraph). This will hopefully come in two posts, one in the morning and one in the evening. If you would like these posts to get even longer, and support the excellent work of Tearfund at the same time, please click here.