Porridge or rolled oats is one of the best breakfasts you can have. Jam packed with essential nutrients and fibre and more nutritious than most cereals you can buy. You don’t have to get bored with porridge when you get creative and add something new every day!

1. Add sliced banana to the rolled oats before you put them in the microwave, then once you cook your porridge for 1-2mins you will bake the banana too. Give the softened banana a stir through the porridge after and you have banana flavoured porridge!
2. Once your porridge is cooked, add sprinkle of cinnamon and roast chopped nuts (you find in baking section of supermarket
3. Add different types of fruit to the top of your cooked porridge. Tinned fruits are very nice as well as grated  apple or sliced kiwifruit.
4. Add baked cinnamon apple to your porridge with a couple of tablespoons of warmed low fat custard. (To bake an apple quickly, dice into small-medium sizes pieces and put in glass or ceramic bowl with a 1cm of water in the bottom. Then generously sprinkle with cinnamon and put a plate or plastic wrap on top of bowl. Put on high for 2mins in microwave. )
5. Add tsp of honey through warmed porridge and sprinkle over two tsp shredded coconut. Shredded coconut goes well with the baked banana too.
6. For an omega 3 and 6 boost add 2Tblsp of mixed seeds such as linseed, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds.
7. To sweeten your porridge and add fibre, dice a couple of dried apricots or dates to your rolled oats before you cook them. The natural sugar from the fruit will sweeten the oats once cooked.
8. Add low fat custard or yoghurt to porridge to cool it down instead of milk, this sweetens the porridge and makes it decadent and exciting but still low fat and gives a calcium boost!
9. Instead of porridge, make yourself some Bircher- style muesli the night before. Just add your rolled oats and milk together, then cinnamon, chopped dates or sultanas/raisins with sliced almonds or seed mix and let soak overnight in the fridge. All set to go for the next morning!
10. Make yourself a porridge sundae! Bake the banana through the porridge, pour over warmed low fat custard or vanilla yoghurt then….. sprinkle with cinnamon, coconut and chopped nuts. Yum!

It’s always nice to have try something a bit different. When grocery shopping last week I came right into the path of the promotional people giving customers a chance to taste a bit of Chinese. They were promoting dumplings.  Traditional Imperial Dumplings. These are precooked and you can either stick them in the microwave, steam in a pot to cook or they were lightly pan frying them for crispiness in my case. Me being a foodie I had try one, especially after reading the package which advertised ‘high quality, all natural ingredients with no preservatives, no added MSG or added sugar’.  Then after turning the package over and reading the ingredients of the Chicken and Vegetable filling it did read 53% vegetables with a good range of vegetables and 20% meat. Alas there were no preservatives in them! And they came in wholegrain flour as well as plain flour. It’s like they have thought of everything! What you are probably wondering is ‘do they taste nice?’ Yes they do- so much so that I bought a value pack for $7 which I think it good value. I have had lots of fun steaming them in pot and popping them in vege soup or panfrying them in my stirfry or simply sticking them in the microwave for a minute then putting them in my salad.

This is definitely something different, a bit fun to experiment with and something the whole family will love. These were Imperial Dumplings and can be found in the deep freeze section in your supermarket.