Episode: 3533
Title: HPR3533: Porridge
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3533/hpr3533.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 01:04:29

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This is Haka Public Radio episode 3533 for Wednesday the 16th of February 2022.
Today's show is entitled, Porridge, It is hosted by D&D and is about 29 minutes long and
carries a clean flag. The server is a show about Porridge.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Haka Public Radio. This is D&D.
So this one is actually something I recorded almost one year ago. It was going to be my first episode
of Haka Public Radio, but I ended up never posting it. And I actually mentioned it in my first
episode. It's my episode about Porridge that I had already recorded. So I was just making some
binhead oat Porridge, which means it took about 25 minutes to cook. And while I was making it,
I was just talking a little bit about Porridge. And I also talked about some of the episodes of
Haka Public Radio that had come out in the weeks before this. This was in March 2021. I decided
to pick it up again and have a listen, cut a few bits here and there and then post it.
All right, good afternoon. Haka Public Radio.
So I'm a new host here. I don't have a name yet. I'll try to come up with one before I post this.
This is kind of like an intro show, I guess. And it's also a show about Porridge.
So about every lately, maybe like every other day, I'll make myself oat Porridge for lunch.
So this is steel cut oats, the brand is Bob's Red Mill. And you can buy it in the US,
which is where I live. Probably somewhere else too, I guess. So yeah, Porridge. So according to
Wikipedia, Porridge is when you take a plant and you boil it, a starchy plant, and you boil it in water.
And you can let it absorb most of the water or not. And depending on the types of Porridge you're
making. So lots of different things are Porridge. For example, in the south of the US, they eat
grits, which is Porridge made from ground up corn. There's also polenta in Italy,
largely the same thing, maybe a different kind of corn or ground finer, I'm not sure. But so
I've got about half a cup of steel cut oats, and I'm kind of roasting them first. I don't know how
often people actually do this, but generally I like to roast things and cook them a little bit
dry before I put water in them, whether it's rice or whatever else. So yeah, by the way, rice is also
kind of like Porridge, but with rice you let it dry almost completely. There are other
kinds of dishes where you have rice, but you maybe don't let it dry all the way, like risotto.
Anyway, so I'm going to add the water now.
So I saw a while back. I read something about the Porridge World Championship or something like that.
I'll try to find the article and now share it in the show notes when I send this in.
So at this thing, you people go and make Porridge with just rice, salt, and your oats.
Just coming in from 2022 to say that, of course, rice, salt, and oats will not make
Porridge. You need water. So I was supposed to say oats, salt, and water.
And then they try and see which one is best. So according to the thing I read,
the brand Bob's Red Mill was almost always the one selected by my people. People would bring their own
oats to this thing, to this championship. So also according to the thing, the typically the
winner or the best ones were the ones where the contestant was actually stirring the oats the
entire time. So here I'm making oats with just water and salt for now. I'm going to put a little more
salt. So yeah, yesterday I tried to do this and I was trying to make it so informal and easy,
just, you know, record it while I'm making my oats, my porridge that I'm going to make anyway.
But I guess I made it so informal that I forgot to check that the microphone was actually being
picked up by the application. So I ended up just recording about 20 minutes of silence. So that
didn't work. I guess I didn't post that one. Maybe it would have been two of two, even for this
podcast. But I did check this on the website show about porridge and the tool on the website
said that it is of interest to hackers. So here it is. So now I'm just stirring this with a wooden spoon
and apparently in I think Scotland or maybe in Ireland they use a special tool that's called
a spurtle. That's kind of like a stick from what I've been able to gather. In fact the trophy of
the the world championship is the golden spurtle. And so yeah, it's just a stick because apparently
you're supposed to stir your porridge so softly that it doesn't release too much more starch than
it would otherwise. But it will still promote that even cooking. Also I think there are spoons that
are kind of like a wooden spoon where both faces of the spoon are like the back of the spoon
to also. So there's not like that shoveling action or whatever when you're stirring it.
So I'm just stirring it with a regular wooden spoon. I'm just being very easy about it.
And then you know you just stand here and stir your porridge and just think about how many
millions of people have made porridge for thousands of years, apparently ever since the Neolithic
like 10,000 years ago. And here I am making it too. In this simple way it's kind of like
it's kind of like solving your problem using just like you I think like a writing
writing a script that uses only Unix tools for example. No dependencies at all. That's kind of
what this is like. And it tastes pretty good too. But yeah I'm read a while back there and there's
this island in the north of I think Scotland maybe to the west some way from the mainland.
And they were this island was evacuated in the early 20th century. People moved to the mainland
and I think ever since no one has lived on this island. And I read that one of the things that
people did was when they left their houses for the last time they left a little mound of oats
on the in the middle of the room. Because I guess that's how significant oats are to them.
Also they say that while in England oats were seen as the food for your horses and stuff
for your cattle or something like that. For your animals anyway not for your people.
It was it would sustain people in Scotland. And I think it still is a very significant staple food
in Scotland. And so it's got that kind of anti imperialist thing about it too. It also represents that
I think. And yeah everywhere in the world people have taken stuff. Starship plants I guess.
And blow them in water to see what happened. And they make there's also the wheat berries.
They will the wheat berries you can make pourers out of them but you have to boil them a little
the night before and then let it soak overnight and then cook it the next day.
I think there's some tradition somewhere where you they eat it with maybe coconut.
It's a sweet porridge and it's maybe new years maybe a new year's tradition. I'm not sure about that.
We have some wheat berries here for that reason. We made that. It was very good.
I want to make it again soon.
Yeah and then like I said before you have polenta you have grits, a lot of grits, delicious stuff.
You just cook it or whatever you want it or don't put anything in it just have it vanilla and
that's good too. Just have it plain you know nothing wrong with plain.
And it's cool.
So yeah things are moving along here. Hopefully Sony will be able to hear the bubbling as some of
the water evaporates or is absorbed by the oats. I'm just going to talk about some of the other
shows I've listened to on this. So yeah I started listening about when it was posted on Hacker
News. It was mentioned in the in the news the coming of the new news episode at the time.
So a bunch of new people came in including the guy with the the trumpet guy trumpet John or
something like that who had a show about his morning routine for his his weekend car maintenance
routine. And a few other new ones came in apparently at the same time. So yeah I really enjoyed
several of the episodes you know you have this lately we've had episodes from some guy on the
internet. Unfortunately it took that name before any of us could. And then there was this guy
before him who was talking about diversity and Linux you know in you know in technology in general
I guess an open source technology and yeah I enjoyed the show of this guy was talking about his
work relating to a COVID-19 in 2020 and then all of a sudden there's a coyote somewhere and
that was very cool. It makes me makes me think about you know just recording a show while you're
doing something else that's pretty interesting you know all of a sudden there was a coyote there
was somebody else there was you know there's this kind of a climax action moment in the show very
cool and meanwhile you know he was sharing very interesting information with us too. And then the
guy that was talking to his wife about alcohol that was pretty interesting too. You know about that
I would say you know you probably want to try it because there's just too much of a risk whenever we
say we're like we don't want to do something should always ask yourself not even ask yourself you
should almost assume there's a risk that you're just doing it out of fear and maybe there will be
something to discover in it so of course you don't want to you don't want to do that all the time
but in that case I definitely got that vibe from that show. I heard there was also a show about
tattoos in a similar kind of way and so interesting stuff really interesting the you know that we
get to share in that. So another thing that I have a public radio has made me think about is how
you here in the US we have the we have PBS right and there's PBS news hour every night at six
and on Fridays they've had this thing called in memoriam so they take they take five people
who have passed away because of COVID-19 from COVID-19 and they just highlight them and they
show pictures that their family sent and they talk about them and stuff that's a really powerful
segment you know every every time it's just really interesting these really fascinating people that
are out there in the world and you know we could just never know about all the fascinating people
in the world and it kind of makes me think about just how much better everything would be maybe if
there were no celebrities if the celebrities were not a thing you know similarly here on Hacker
Public Radio you download the episode when it comes out and maybe you look at the subject if
it's interesting you might start playing it and you know maybe you have no idea who who is sharing
it with you and who recorded it and and you're really often it's just really interesting people
people I want to hear from you know much more than I want to hear from the people that you generally
see when you turn on your TV or when you know like when you open your your music app on your phone
all of a sudden you're seeing all these damn people that you you have no interest in you know famous
people and you have to kind of steer away from them otherwise you would just be given them if you don't
do anything about it so yeah very cool I'm very grateful for this um definitely hear the call to
provide a show so the the day when there is no show to air will never come and so we'll continue to have
this at least for as long as I'm here hopefully so getting pretty um advanced here let me see maybe you
can hear the bubbling isn't that wonderful so yeah you can kind of see the starch floating around and
just keep going and it'll absorb a little more I don't like my orange super watery maybe people
who make it with milk prefer to leave it more liquidy because it's like creamy or something
since I'm just making it with water and salt I I let it go pretty far and then what I do which
um happens to be what I've read is the kind of most basic most traditional way to eat
porridge is you just just pour it in a bowl or in your plate and just sprinkle a little bit of brown
sugar on top and that's it then you eat it I um I don't stir it in because I kind of like to
just kind of skim the top with my spoon and then get a few spoons with this really sweet
porridge and then the rest of it is more savory I find that kind of fun
so all right I think I'm gonna wrap this up I can't think of anything else
anyway I just want to thank everyone for um for what they do with this stuff
acropublic radio is really incredible I've had great times listening to these and
and hopefully hopefully I can be a contributor to who knows
and dropping this one in kind of a weird one I know about porridge
but I did test it on the tool on the website and it did say it was of interest to hackers
so all right have a good one then I'll see you next time
all right so that was that and then later a few months after I recorded this one
I I just recorded the sound of making porridge with no voice and this was it was these
uh quick cooking um steel cut oats from Bob's Red Mill which is kind of like they're a little bit
rolled so that the bits are a little smaller so it cooks much faster and I thought it was worth
it because the it's still pretty good um compared to like actual rolled oats the stuff that
cooks in just like a minute or something like that and just it's just mush um the the quick
cooking steel cut oats I thought was a good tradeoff so it was revealed a little while ago
well months ago now in the emailing list that there are some listeners of hacker public radio that
use the show uh as a way to go to sleep so I thought as a shout out to those listeners I will play
um an eight minute clip of the sound of making porridge all right um so to everyone else if you
want to skip to the next episode feel free this was another episode of hacker public radio thank
you very much for tuning in and come back tomorrow for another episode
um
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