text: I am a working mother of two boys, blogging out of the island of Trinidad in the Caribbean. This is where I share my adventures and misadventures in the kitchen. Mostly, I blog around meals created to feed my family, mixed in with snippets of my life. Thank you for visiting. It is a pleasure to share and cook with you.
  Wednesday, June 10, 2009
  Delectable Gruel?
  Labels: Caribbean
  I fall into the category of folks who hate porridge. Hate might indeed be a somewhat mild word. Fortunately I was a child of the 70's, a time of economic wealth for my country, so Kellogs cornflakes featured more often on our breakfast table than bowls of porridge. My dad often talks of farine and the cornmeal porridge of his childhood yet strangely these things were never prepared for me. The memories I have of porridge are few and vague. But in all those memories it seems that cream- of-wheat was the gruel du jour. It arrived on the table as a steaming-hot, grey, mass, and left as cold, congealed, hardly touched lump - the colour and texture of papier-mâché. As unappetizing as it was, it wasn't the lack of taste that was this dishes undoing but it's texture. To this day I have a hard time swallowing porridge and I spend such a long time trying that it invariable turns into cold lumps as I dawdle over consumption. I have always imagined that this was what cardboard would taste like if macerated with water.
  Okay , now I am an adult and not forced to eat porridge anymore so why then do I continue? Well the health benefits of oats have persuaded me that their consumption are worth my effort. Besides there are not many foods that I do not like and I am thinking that perhaps it's an acquired taste. So this month I am on a quest to acquire a taste or more accurately a tolerance for the texture of porridge. Additionally, it seems a pity that I have never tasted some of our traditional porridge mixes from times past.
  So here is my review. This was anything but bland, the aromas of this cornmeal gruel tantalized and really put me in a positive frame of mind for trying something new. I could not wait to taste this; it smelled sooooo good. Anyone who loves porridge should love this, sadly it did not make me a convert. The texture was still gag inducing. Still I will not be defeated. I will try farine (cassava porridge) next.