Tropical porridge

If you, like me, grew up eating bland boring porridge, you might not get that exciting at the thought of having porridge for breakfast. But it can be much more exciting if you just add the right things to it. 
Porridge is a bit like potatoes – quite plain and boring if served on their own but if you add things such as butter, salt or spices potatoes taste lovely. The same goes for porridge and when you start experimenting by mixing your porridge with healthy ingredients you might just find that porridge can be a delicious and excellent breakfast. Porridge is of course also great for your tummy and health with healthy fiber and micronutrients to set you up for a good start to the day.

Now, there’s lots of things you can mix your porridge with so the best thing is to choose a few and then add them to your porridge one at the time to see if you like the mix.

Some ingredients can be better to mix in with your orridge such as vanilla paste/extract, maple syrup, mashed banana. Whilst others work better as a topping such as berries, fruit, nuts and seeds. But you might find that you prefer mixing it all up and that’s fine too – whatever takes your fancy 🙂

For today we’ve chosen to make a bit of a tropical themed porridge with pineapple and banana. We also mixed the porridge with a few drops of vanilla paste and some maple syrup. It’s a really lovely mix and takes a bland porridge to a totally new level. See the recipe below.

We made this porridge with water and then added milk, but if you prefer your porridge a bit creamier you can make the porridge with some type of milk such as almond, rice or lactose free milk.

Here are some of our other favourite tummy friendly porridge toppings to try out:

Fruit:
Banana, Pineapple, passion fruit, kiwi, 

Berries:
Blueberries, raspberries and strawberries

Nuts:
Macadamia nuts, walnuts and pecan nuts

Seeds:
Sunflower seeds, chia seeds and sunflower seeds

Other:
Dark chocolate (let it melt on the porridge or stir it in), maple syrup, peanut butter, vanilla paste or extract.

If you suffer with a sensitive tummy it’s worth remembering to add small portions of fruit, berries and chocolate or similar rather then large. Large portions can upset a sensitive tummy so avoid overloading your porridge however tempting it may be. 

TROPICAL PORRIDGE: 

Makes 1 Serving
½ cup (50 g) porridge oats (Choose gluten free oats if you have coeliac disease) 
1 ½ cup (350ml) water or almond, rice or lactose free milk 

Toppings
5-8 pineapple chunks
3-5 slices of banana
1-2 drops of vanilla paste/extract
1/2 tbsp maple syrup

Directions
1. Put the oats in a small saucepan, pour over your preferred milk or water. Bring to boil and simmer for 4-5 minutes, stirring occasionally and watching that it doesn’t catch the bottom of the pan. 
2. To serve, pour into a bowl and add or stir in the the toppings. Serve hot!