The Other Woman Cooks

I promised Memere's brown bread recipe and I always try to keep my promises. Tomorrow I'll toast up a few slices of yummy steam-baked molasses loaf for breakfast with scrambled eggs. Add a pot of butter rum flavored decaf made in the French press to sip on while reading the newspaper at the table and Sunday morning doesn't get much better! And I'll be saving the coffee can for the next time I mix up this brown bread recipe -- I have a feeling it won't be long. MEMERE'S MOLASSES LOAF 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, sifted before measuring 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup quick-cooking oats 1 cup cornmeal 1/2 cup unsulphured molasses 1 cup milk 2 teaspoons white vinegar 1 tablespoon melted butter or margarine 1/2 cup raisins, optional In a large mixing bowl, sift together flour, soda, and salt. Add oats and cornmeal. Set aside 2 tablespoons of the dry mixture into a small mixing bowl. Stir molasses, butter, vinegar and milk into the dry ingredients. Mix...

What we Americans call oatmeal is known as porridge in the rest of the English speaking world. In Germany it's haferbrei, havregrot in Norway, owsiaka in Poland and puder in Estonia. But nowhere is oatmeal mush more beloved than in Scotland, where the art of porridge making is a competition. The Golden Spurtle Award is bestowed to the world's most talented porridge maker at the annual World Porridge Making Championship in Carrbridge, Inverness-shire. The event is held in October and the winner recieves a gold-colored spurtle as a trophy -- the spurtle is a flat wooden spatula-type utensil traditionally used to stir the porridge during cooking. I use a standard issue wooden spoon. Wonder what they would say about my special Christmas porridge recipe? OATMEAL BRULEE 2 cups cooked oatmeal 1 cup of your favorite berries (fresh or frozen are best but canned is okay) 2 tablespoons white sugar Make 2 cups of your favorite oatmeal. I like to use Quaker's quick cooking kind, it take...

Oatmeal, dried plums, honey and various spices in English Christmas pudding was the beginning of the Christmas fruitcake tradition. By the 16th century, the oatmeal was removed and some of the familiar ingredients of cake were added, such as eggs, butter and wheat flour. The concoction was then boiled into a plum cake, often with no plums or any dried fruits at all. Wealthy families with ovens baked the “Christmas Cake” adding more expensive dried fruit and spices. The cake celebrated the Wise Men bringing exotic spices to the Christ child. And here’s where it gets all Dickensian. The English upper class would give out pieces of fruitcake to the poor, who sang Christmas Carols in the streets in the late 1700's. By the end of the 18th century, there were actually laws saying that plum cakes (generic for dried fruit) could only be consumed at Christmas, Easter, weddings, christenings, and funerals. Seems to me the masses were tricked into believing that having fruitcake was special. ...