In between beautiful things and Good Things threads, stuff that just makes you (me) think wow, if only I hadn’t been sprawled on the sofa I could have been doing…e.g. I can’t get over how tough this must have been and what a fantastic person she is
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Astonishing achievement but this
“The swim was due to be about 80 miles but because of strong tides Ms Thomas ended up swimming closer to 130 miles.”
Is abject nonsense and shows a total misunderstanding of tidal streams and how you plan a course to take them into account.
Her track may have been 130 miles even if she only swam 80
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I’d have been more impressed if she’d done it in a boat.
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I microwaved a bowl of porridge this morning without it exploding.
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Now that’s impressive. I’ve never bloody managed it.
Do people actually make porridge in a microwave?
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Faffers who aren’t prepared to cheat do. For the rest …
VB
I thought that continuous agitation was important.
Strapline yadda blah.
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There was no shortage of that in our kitchen when we were both still working.
VB
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I do if I’m making it at work due to lack of hob there.
It always tastes good once I’ve scraped the exploded remains from the inside of the microwave.
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Blast for 2 minutes, stir, then cycle one minute / stir until it’s done. Takes about 5 minutes in all on average. Is that complicated in ways I can’t understand?
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Is that shorter than sticking the liquid and oats in a saucepan and stirring continuously though? What do you do in the intervals?
Most of us can make coffee in that time.
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I managed to forget the porridge was on the hob this morning and walked away with it on high heat. Came back to a carbon frisbee 
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If I found myself in this position, I would use it to consider the dozens of things I’d rather be eating for breakfast than porridge.
Get juice out, any other stuff for the kids. If I’m really stuck I might have to talk to the wife though.
It’s more of a carrier for other things imho. Anything that allows me to eat treacle for breakfast cannot be entirely bad. Also works well with raisins cooked in it.
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weigh the porridge
check its temperature
sieve to remove dust
re-weigh to check
check temperature of porridge
check room temperature
check room humidity
weigh liquid of choice noting the ratio of oats and liquid that you start with will also affect the eventual consistency. Too little water limits gelatinisation. Most recipes recommend a 2:1 ratio of liquid to oats to avoid this.
choose pan
add ingredients including any seasonings
heat over a period of 35 minutes slowly
stirring constantly with a spootle
note swelling of starch granules causes the porridge to thicken. This process is starch gelatinisation; for oat starch, it kicks off when the temperature reaches around 60˚C.
As gelatinisation proceeds, porridge gets thicker and thicker. This thickening is known as ‘pasting’. It doesn’t continue indefinitely; around 95˚C, porridge thickness reaches its peak. After this, the continued increase of the temperature causes amylose to start leaking out of the starch granules. This slow breakdown and disintegration of starch lowers the thickness of the porridge.
Add dressings to taste many like something sweet but i prefer a swirl of marmite.
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