Cereal fillings

I was clearing out the larder cupboard last weekend and found some treasures I had almost forgotten existed. Like a canister of wild rice, hoarded so jealously that even I had missed it on the occasions I was looking for it; like a can of chunk tuna in spring water, never as delicious as the oily equivalent, but so much better for you, nutritionists insist; like a half-jar of garlic powder, ideal for those times you don’t feel like fiddling with the fresh stuff, but distressingly prone to clumping stodgily in the container. And, of course, that box of high-fibre low-fat fruit-and-nut muesli that I had urged on Father, promising to eat half of it myself with my favourite plain yoghurt for creaminess for the accompanying crunch. Which reminded me, there should be some Quaker Oats, some cracked wheat and some spirulina mix in that store…

But it served to remind me of the more healthful aspects of life that I had been ignoring for far too long. In between eating ‘more sugar, my dear!’, as my doctor, my friends, my colleagues and my family had been urging me to do, I had completely neglected the more obvious parts of my hitherto perfectly-good-for-you diet, which I had been assiduously following for so long that it had become part of my life and living style, so much so that I had stopped even noticing that it was not what those around me chose when given a choice. And I actually liked it, from the high-fibre crackers to the low-salt soups to the whole-grain cereals. Which is where the old memory cells sparked again…

In the drawer of my desk in the office I had stashed away some packs of instant cereal. It combined the healthiness of oats and milk with the green goodness of spirulina and I had once consumed it by the gallon, liking its sweet milky flavour and texture as much as I liked the idea of all that wonderful nutritional stuff going smoothly down my throat. Eaten hot it was wonderful, soothe food without being cloyingly anything, sweet or salty or even just plain stodgy, which is the most comforting of all, albeit in smallish doses. All I needed to do was to mix the semi-powder in the packet with hot water and, voila, the deed was done to perfection. I used to be diligent about it whenever I had an iffy tummy and wanted something more easy to digest than the usual dahi-chawal that was a preferred favourite, but since there had been little time or instance for me to need it, I had forgotten it existed.

This morning I found inspiration in the fact that I was feeling a little light-headed and was not in the mood to go through another bout of dizzy spells and wavering traffic, both human and automobile. So I scrounged in the drawer and discovered my stash…a plastic baggie full of the small packets of spirulina cereal. I tore one open, dumped its contents into my trusty giant mug, added steaming hot water from the fountain and stirred…it was all so familiar – the grey-green sludge, the gentle waft of hot milk and oatmeal and the underlying aroma of grassiness that gave the melange its raison d’etre. The first sip proved that the point still existed; the semi-liquid food still worked its magic. And I was still a nicely happy camper with an even happier tummy.