Your Final Friday KISS - The Spurtle!

For your final Friday KISS, I've chosen a kitchen gadget that's unique and rather obscure (at least in the US), that I don't own, have never used, nor had even heard of until it was featured in Wordsmith's A.Word.A.Day a while back. (Now, if you've not only heard of it but have one in your drawer and use it often, I'm going to feel pathetic. So just pretend ignorance, mmmkay?) ;-)

Introducing... the spurtle!

Used to stir porridge since the 16th century, the spurtle is considered superior to a spoon because its shape prevents clumping and mushiness.

Both pictures are from Lee Valley Tools, where you can buy one for your own gadget collection. (Of course, you can always use the handle of a wooden spoon instead, but that wouldn't make for much of a gadget post now, would it?)

My mother always made me eat oatmeal when I was a kid and I detested it. I thought it looked (and tasted, though I was guessing on that) like wallpaper paste. But when BW and I stayed at a B&B in Edinburgh twelve years ago, I - rather reluctantly, but "when in Rome..." - ate a bowl of "pinhead porridge" (oatmeal made with steel-cut oats) for breakfast and had to take back every bad thing I'd ever said or thought about oatmeal!

We also enjoy oat groats ~ whole oats that, unlike steel-cut oats, have not been steamed and coarsely chopped, so they take longer to cook but our crockpot does it brilliantly overnight while we slumber. And BW enjoys thick-cut rolled oats, but thick though they may be, they still give me wallpaper paste flashbacks. So I'll stick with the groats and the steel-cut, thank you! I enjoy my pinhead porridge with a little vanilla hemp or soy milk, maple syrup, whole flaxseeds, cinnamon and nutmeg, and fresh fruit like blueberries, apples or bananas, and/or dried fruit like raisins, currants or dried cranberries.

Oatmeal is such a hearty, healthy breakfast, especially in the cold winter months, so here are a few recipes to warm your innards and give your spurtle a workout...

From FatFreeVegan:
Oatmeal: It's What's For Breakfast

From the Dr. McDougall newsletters:

Baked Oatmeal Casserole, Steel Cut Irish Oatmeal, and Multigrain Hot Cereal

If your appetite for spurtle-lore and all things oatmeal still isn't satisfied, check out The Tradition and Trivia of Scottish Porridge from Seafoam Woodturning (where you can also buy yourself another spurtle!)

And if you're so inclined, once armed with a spurtle and having mastered the knowledge and skills of oats and porridge-making, you can put your talents to the test and perhaps become the next...

Yes, Virginia, there is a world porridge-making championship. Next one is in October 2010, so you've got plenty of time to get your game on. ;-)

(Meanwhile, I'm off to plan oat-intensive dishes for Hogmanay and Bobby Burns' birthday next month, while eating pinhead porridge and drinking oatmeal stout!) ;-)