This post has three topics: culinary, history, and literary. All that for oatmeal? You, betcha.
I love food anthropology. It’s the one thing I would have gone back to school for if I didn’t hate going to school so much.
Marty and I watched a program on YouTube that talked about what people ate at different points in time.
The guy whose show it is also covers what the rich, the poor, and the working class people ate.
We watched an episode on 18th-century breakfasts the other night. They have records of what people ate since they kept journals and wrote these things down.
Ben Franklin’s writings are most famous for his love of bread and cheese, which he lived off of when he wasn’t in other people’s company.
In the episode, the guy talked about oatmeal. It is also known as groul, water, milk groul, and porridge made with water or milk. All three classes of people ate plain oatmeal or groul.
Ah, so that’s what nasty old Scrooge was eating. I always wondered about that. Did anyone know what groul was? It sounded awful.
The literary piece is how you name a menu item. There is a way to add romance, such as calling pumpkin oatmeal pumpkin milk porridge with maple syrup.
We named our business The Vermont Spätzle Company because it was the first thing that came to mind and because the word Vermon adds romance to the name.
For example, how would the Ohio Spätzle or NY Spätzle Company sound? However, if it was The Saratoga Spätzle Company, you have the romance in the name.
As a food service director at school, I wrote the menu with the same feeling for the menu items. Such as a three-cheese focaccia melt with tomato and pesto.
Another example is calling a ham and cheese bagel melt a cowboy bagel with ham, cheddar, and BBQ sauce. See?
The culinary part is simple. It is pumpkin, oatmeal, toasted nuts, warm spices such as cinnamon and nutmeg, maple syrup, brown sugar, salt, milk, and water.
The rest is up to you and your taste or a recipe you found. I read a few recipes to know the quantities, then did my own thing. It turned out exactly how I wanted it to.
This would be on the menu throughout the fall season, along with Apple Cider porridge topped with diced apple, toasted nuts, and cinnamon sugar in my pretend restaurant or cafe.
Those menu items scream autumn, especially here in VT. They would be a home run, unlike just writing just oatmeal.
Here are some recipes to try: Pumpkin Oatmeal by Well Plated and another recipe from Del’s cooking twist.
I’m in a hurry to publish this piece; please excuse the grammar. Have a great day!