Breakfast

..could
access the music room, which was equipped with a grand piano and comfortable
looking chairs with flower print covers – it probably doubled as a lounge /
reception room now that I think about it. Our grandmother was a formidable pianist
and we would spend many an evening singing selections from South Pacific
and My Fair Lady round the piano. Our grandfather was an accomplished
organist and played the church organ on Sunday. I probably got my musical genes
from them, although my mother also sang in a choir.
Across the hall was the dark mahogany dining room where we had our very formal
evening dinners precisely timed for the Colonel’s arrival home from the
office or Lions Club meetings. Everybody had to dress up for these meals, which
meant school uniforms for Richard and me and evening dress for the adults. I
didn’t always enjoy dinners because I was a picky eater and was compelled
to eat things I didn’t really care for.
Unintentionally adding to my discomfort was our grandfather, who had an aura
of authority and the knack of making me feel slightly uncomfortable with his
judicious application of gentle sarcasm, to which my brother and I were quite
unaccustomed, living as we were with our mother and grandmother back in little
ol’ Christchurch.
Adjoining the dining room and at the back of the house was the nerve-centre
of the entire operation – the kitchen, where we all enjoyed the most fabulous
and informal breakfasts known to man, let alone two very young and impressionable
boys from the Deep South.
Rolled oats were religiously soaked overnight in a gigantic saucepan to provide
six or more hungry bodies with porridgy nutrition – what wasn’t
eaten was strewn over the top of a hedge adjacent to the kitchen window for
the nourishment of the local bird-life.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. We actually began breakfast with sweet
oranges or grapefruit from the orchard, cut in half and segmented with the special
segmenting knife (with the curiously bent tip), and then sprinkled with brown
sugar. Then came the porridge, also liberally sprinkled with brown sugar (with
the occasional lump) or sometimes golden syrup. Or sometimes, naughtily, both.

Then came the endless slices of toast spread with butter and topped with creamed
clover honey from a waxed cardboard honey pot – which, if you were lucky,
would also have the odd lump that had escaped being creamed.
If you could still muster an appetite, you could then indulge in your choice
of eggs served with bacon and accompanied by your choice of hand squeezed orange
juice or a cup of tea.
All this dazzling and sumptuous fare happily and chattily served to us by our
doting grandmother and her equally doting sister who were so very keen to see
us put on some weight or even grow perceptibly, (we were scrupulously measured),
before we boarded the DC3 for the bumpy flight back home to Christchurch.

The only remaining relic of this orgy of the senses today is my present role
as undisputed Porridge Master here in Mt Waverley. I don’t get to fuss
with food much, given that Maria is such a fabulous cook, so I value making
this small contribution to our daily well-being.
Porridge aficionados might be interested in my methods. First up, I don’t
soak the oats overnight. I get the cheapest oats available – i.e.
the no-name brand from Woolworths that you can buy for about a dollar a bag.
M actually prefers the taste of these oats to the more fancy and expensive brands
you can buy, which, given her high standards, is very rewarding for a cheapskate
like me.
I grab a couple of handfuls of oats and put them in the heavy cast-iron saucepan
that M hates so much (you can’t win ‘em all), add water and some
salt to taste and soak them for no more or less than thirty minutes. I switch
on the small hot plate to half way and cook the oats for exactly fifteen minutes.
And that’s it! No need for the pretend quick oats. All done in forty-five
minutes. Then for me there’s perhaps a teaspoon full of brown sugar for
old-times’ sake, some lecithin granules (I think that’s for vitamin B,
but it’s so long ago now that I started this habit I’ve forgotten
what it was for), a dash of cinnamon and a handful of sultanas. Add a little
oat milk and that’s me sorted till 1.00 or even later.
Nowhere near the scale or grandeur of our Auckland breakfasts I have to admit,
but a breakfast for our times.