[Sca-cooks] oatmeal/hot cereal?

[Gretchen Beck]

--On Wednesday, June 21, 2006 5:01 PM -0500 Anne-Marie Rousseau 
<dailleurs at liripipe.com> wrote:

> hi!
>
> has anyone had success making oatmeal/hot cereal on the fire? I'm hoping
> to find a  method that involves real oats (not the rolled kind, etc) that
> I can start a fire,  set it burbling and ignore for a bit while I chop up
> dried fruit, etc
>
> 1. what kind of oats/grains did you use?
> 2. what were your favorite add ins?
> 3. I remember vaguly a recipe for a hot cereal dish from le menagier?
> maybe? anyone  have access to their books who can look it up?
>
> bascially I'm looking for an easy breakfast dish to do during a weeklong
> re- enactment event. the rest of camp may be happy living off smoked
> fish, hard boiled  eggs and such but me, I needs me some fiber ;)

As I understand it, what you want is called brose. You use pinhead oats, 
and make it just like you would instant -- put the oatmeal in a bowl, cover 
with boiling water, cover and let it steam for about 5 minutes.

The Scots Independent provides a lovely description of the process 
(<http://www.scotsindependent.org/features/food/oatmeal_brose.htm>)

Oatmeal brose was the true foundation of the expedition, and the correct 
method of making it must be put on record. A quantity of coarse oatmeal - 
with salt 'to taste' as they say - is placed in a bowl and boiling water 
poured over it. The water must be boiling hard as it pours and there should 
be enough of it to just cover the oatmeal. A plate is immediately placed 
over the bowl like a lid. You now sit by for a few minutes, gloating. This 
is your brose cooking in its own steam. During this pause, slip a nut of 
butter under the plate and into the brose. In four or five minutes whip off 
the lid, stir the mass violently together, splash in some milk and eat. You 
will never again be happy with the wersh and fushionless silky slop which 
passes for porridge. This was the food whose devotees staggered the legions 
of Rome; broke the Norsemen; held the Border for five hundred years; and 
are standing fast on borders till. It is a dish for men. It also happens to 
taste superbly. We ate it twice a day, frequently without milk, although 
such a simplification demands what an Ayrshire farmer once described to me 
as a 'guid-gaun stomach'. He is a happy traveller who has with him a bag of 
oatmeal and a poke of salt. He will travel fast and far.'

toodles, margaret