Comfort Food for the Working Girl

When it gets colder, I really crave porridge for breakfast. I used to follow an old-skool Irish recipe which used a large quantity of oats and a whole pint of water/milk and demanded a lot of stirring. Not exactly your quick breakfast option. I would prepare the porridge according to the recipe on weekends and then refrigerate it, only heating two or three spoonfuls in the microwave every morning. The thing is, I can't really eat much first thing in the morning so a small serving suffices. Thanks to the fact that our new office kitchenette boasts a microwave, I "developed" the ultimate super-quick office-porridge:

If you're a porridge afficionado as well, this is my tried-and-tested method, which takes all of 2 minutes, really:

2-3 tablespoons porridge oats (I use what is called Hafermark here, a more finely shredded variety) Feel free to use more if you're hungrier as this is really a very small serving.

1 pinch of ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon honey

Put the kettle on and boil water. Put the above ingredients in a small heat-proof bowl and add just enough hot water to make it look like a thick pulp when you have blended it in. Add a bit of milk (cold from the fridge) and pop the bowl into your microwave. No need for stirring, just let the milk sit on top. Set the microwave to the highest temperature and (important!) don't go away but watch out for the milk to start bubbling up, making the whole porridge "rise". Switch off immediately unless you want to have to clean up an unsavoury mess in your microwave and stir again. Attention: piping hot.

Eat and enjoy