Need to give the missus a treat? Here's a neat breakfast-in-bed Valentine recipe to give your wife on one of those days when you want to show your appreciation for everything she does and she feels like laying in for some extra doze. It's your chance to prove you can be trusted in the kitchen!
Here's what you need for each one-person serving:-
Put all the ingredients in the saucepan except the salt, sugar, syrup, raisins, banana, water and milk.
Check the saucepan. There should be oats in it. If there are no oats in there you probably can't follow instructions very well, and should either give up or start again.
Add the milk or milk-and-water, bring to boil on high heat. There's a trick in lifting the saucepan off the heat as soon as the milk starts to rise, so the whole thing doesn't boil over. You should probably practise this ahead of time while she's out shopping.
While that's heating up, replace salt in cupboard, you won't need it. If you use salt in recipes like these you can only taste salt. The oats have enough salt already and too much of it is bad for you anyway.
While you were trying to find the nook or cranny where you should be replacing the salt among all the bewildering array of packets, boxes, cans and containers, the milk probably boiled over because you didn't quite get to it in time, so you'll need the mop and bucket to clean up the horrible gooey mess and start again. Try to be quiet. If you wake her up prematurely you'll have a lot of awkward explaining to do. When starting over, it might not be a bad idea to use a bigger saucepan until you get the hang of it.
Okay, now that you've got the boiling milk under control, replace the saucepan on low heat and adjust until it's simmering. That means watching the bubbles rise slowly to the surface while stirring continuously. Use a wooden spoon - metal ones make the porridge taste awful.
Divide the raisins into two equal piles, and add one pile to the saucepan. We're making porridge here, not Figgy Pudding, and we don't need that many raisins. Do whatever you want with the other pile, but don't give all of them to the cat.
Thinly slice the banana and add it to the porridge. Actually you might have been better off organizing this before you started, otherwise you won't be stirring continuously like you're supposed to and the milk will burn in the bottom of the saucepan. Oh well, might as well scour the pan out and start again. At this point you can't win - as a woman she will not eat anything burnt, or anything that's been near anything burnt, and if you try to scour the pan and serve the untarnished remnants the porridge will be cold by the time you're done and she won't eat that either. Do not serve the porridge and leave the pan til 'later' - she will almost certainly beat you to it and you will never hear the last of it.
Keep simmering and stirring while the banana disappears completely into the mixture. I should have mentioned that only ripe bananas should be used, because if the skins are at all green your porridge will taste like freshly-cut grass.
Tip: Make sure you get the stringy bits off the banana. If you don't they will strengthen during cooking and she will almost certainly accuse you of dropping hairs in the pot. Not worth the risk. The raisins, meantime, will swell up like plump cherubs. Don't worry about them bursting - if they do, it's not particularly violent and you shouldn't need the mop and bucket again. Maybe just some paper towel.
Keep simmering and stirring until the porridge has thickened, which should be about five to ten minutes. If you keep this up too long the bottom of the saucepan will burn, so be careful otherwise you're back to scouring again. Actually, that's one reason why I use water to dilute the milk, as it helps to control this procedure.
Okay, we're almost there. Pour the syrup into whatever you're going to serve the porridge in, usually a cereal bowl, but if you're a bachelor doing this for yourself you can use whatever is either clean or nearby, such as plastic sandwich box or beer mug. Try not to use anything that recently contained salad dressing.
Pour the porridge onto the syrup, and serve.
Wasn't too hard, was it?