No 2 Porridge in the the morning.

RAIN ON MY WINDOW.

No 2. Porridge in the morning. in Groat 19.10.2007

Stirring up memories
of the porridge pot.

The Scots have a reputation for, among other things, porridge, made from the grain that is so Scottish in most minds, though grown in many other countries. And my old memories of porridge surprise me. Early morning in Whitehall, getting up in the cold, making our way downstairs to the kitchen, the waft of cooking porridge meeting us half way down. Over the years our mother had quite a few “girls” in the kitchen, some older, some younger. And we boys so enjoyed being in the kitchen when the bothy men came in for first breakfast, to sit quietly and listen to their chatter while they ate. Making porridge was the first task of the day after getting the coal burning cast-iron stove to fire up for the day’s work. The girls were versatile to the point of madness, each having their own recipe. To think that humble oatmeal could find so many ways to display itself is mind-boggling.
The porridge pot was quite large - as it had to be to make enough for ourselves in the farm house and for the bothy men who ate in the kitchen, though living and sleeping in the bothy. We family had ours later in the dining room after the men had gone. And any porridge left over was not wasted, being kept for the dogs and the cats sitting patiently waiting at the back door.
The first thing was to boil the water, which took some time. Next salt - a controversial addition, but porridge without salt was unheard of. No maple syrup then, nor brown sugar. There lay the first room for error, sometimes too little salt, sometimes too much, sometimes just right. Remember the fable of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
When the water had boiled, oatmeal was sifted out of one hand onto the water surface, the other hand meantime rapidly stirring with the spirtle ( a long wooden spoon ) or sometimes just a round wooden affair. This, at least in theory, meant no lumps. Keep stirring, keep stirring, sift on more meal, look for bubbles rising as the porridge heats to boiling, make sure there’s nothing left to stick on the bottom of the pot. When small bubbles showed it was near enough boiling, then the pot would be set back a bit to simmer on a less hot spot on the stove. This all took time of course. And meanwhile the kitchen warmed up.
It is amazing to recount all the different varieties of porridge. There was smooth porridge - usually the product of quite some time simmering, with the occasional stir. There was thick porridge, thick enough for the spoon to stand up in. There was thin watery porridge – too little meal. There was raw porridge, not long enough on the fire to get the meal thoroughly cooked, tasting more of just plain watery oatmeal. There was hot porridge and there was cold porridge. There was sometimes yesterday’s porridge, warmed up and often quite good. And there was burnt porridge, with a catching acrid smell that met us half way down the stairs, a smell that lingered in the kitchen for the rest of the day. Not wasted entirely, again the dogs and cats at the door dealt with all and any cooking catastrophe. There was lumpy porridge. Even there the lumps were of different styles, small, medium, large, cooked, raw. There was smooth porridge from the oatmeal being put in the pot the night before to soak and save time in the morning. Recommended actually, but not always done.
At what time the girls started making the porridge in the morning I cannot remember, but it had to be pretty early to be ready for the bothy boys.


There were the different methods of eating porridge. The bothy men each had a bowl of our own farm milk set out for them the night before, all covered with a tea towel; the milk was organic ( there was, of course, no other then) and it always had a goodly layer of rich thick cream on top come morning. None of your thin blue slimming milk of today. To each a generous ladle of porridge in a big plate or bowl, and a spoon. There was one of the men who had his own horn spoon, made by himself, kept in the kitchen for him and for no other. And he swore that the porridge tasted the better with it.
There would be a sprinkling of sugar if a sweet tooth (not too common) or a touch more salt for others. The milk bowl could be used to dip a spoonful of porridge in the milk and then to mouth. Afterwards the milk bowl had a further use in being filled with hot strong tea with sugar ladled in. For the bothy men, and all the other farm workers, needed energy for their long hours of hard manual labour. Also on the table were new made oatcakes, flour bannocks, bere bannocks, farm made butter, home made jam, often rhubarb or blackcurrant from the farm house garden – and maybe a tin of Lyles Golden Syrup, or Nestles Condensed Milk. No one went out to work hungry.

Whichever girl had made the porridge was there for either compliment or criticism, usually joshed fiercely in a friendly way into the bargain. Many a lasting love affair began over a plate of porridge in a farmhouse kitchen. Or some ribald comment was passed as to who the girl had been out with the night before. No blushes spared, for even in the dark the countryside has sharp eyes and ears.

The oatmeal for daily use was kept in the kitchen girnel, a small wooden kist refilled when need be by a bag carried in on a strong shoulder from the big meal girnel in the grain loft in the steading. It was filled from the Stronsay meal mill in season and made from our own farm oats, or bere, packed as hard as iron by foot treading done with tackety boots but encased in a strong thick hessian meal bag, keeping all year round - although towards late summer and before next year’s crop, and nearly empty, it took on a slightly musty odour as mites crept in. Still, for these days of old it kept pretty well, and there was no other way. Each year the big girnel was cleaned out entirely of last year’s meal and a sulphur candle or two was lit in it to fumigate and eliminate any small denizens. That loft girnel was the farm girnel, padlocked of course, but all the “fairm toon” got their meal from it’s cavernous depths. Suspended from the rafters beside it was a weighing balance with a large brass scoop to measure out the six bolls per year that each married man got as part of his wages, a boll being 140 lbs, one boll every two months. Beremeal was an extra and paid for by the worker if he wanted some. The meal girnel actually was in two halves, the larger half for oatmeal, the other for beremeal.
No kilos then, we had beaten Napoleon a long time ago. Still, considering our present-day weights and measures, he has had the last laugh.