Breakfast#

I am a person of routine, for the most part. Breakfasts in any given month will be yoghurt and granola for an average of 28 days. There are times where I prefer to put some effort in, and will indulge in a slow, mindful breakfast. For this, there is nothing better for my tastes than Red River Cereal.

I don’t know if this is a universally Canadian food, but I’m fairly confident that it is an exclusively Canadian one, maybe a few American border towns have been lucky enough to get some, but it is as Canadian as poutine, and much more suitable for breakfast.

Red River Cereal is a porridge, a boiled slurry of seeds and grains. I serve it spiced and sweetened, with a cup of black tea.

The Cereal#

It takes a lot of water to render the birdseed-looking mix into something edible. For each bowl of cereal, you’ll want to start by boiling two cups of water. Once it’s at a boil, I add a small pinch of salt - less than you think. Adding in a half cup of Red River, and stirring until it is well dispersed and not clumpy. Turn the heat down to a bare simmer, and set a timer for 12 minutes.

While that’s going, go start your kettle for the tea. You can of course eat Red River without a cup of nice black tea, but why would you?

Next, pull out your microplane, and grate about 2cm of a cinnamon stick, a couple of quick skims from a whole nutmeg. Add in a half teaspoon of ground cardamom, and set aside.

When the cereal has been simmering for a couple of minutes, give it a good stir, and add in a palmful of sultana or golden raisins. You might think that you don’t like raisins. You’re probably wrong, do it anyway. Raisins are good for you.

At about the 8 minute mark, pour the water into your tea. I’m not here to tell you about how to make tea. Maybe another day. Tea is good for you, drink more of it. Don’t buy the cheap stuff. Set your tea timer for 3 minutes and 30 seconds for most bagged black tea. Fill your bowl with hot tap water and set it aside to take the chill out of the ceramic.

Now we’re getting into the thick of it. Hopefully you had your coffee before you started all of this, because you’re going to have to hustle. At 10 minutes, stir in your spice mixture and add about 3tbsps of maple syrup in. At 11 minutes 30 seconds, your tea timer will go off, pull the bag. At 12 minutes, your cereal timer goes off, and you can kill the heat, dump the warming water from your bowl, and put the cereal in the bowl. Cover, and let sit for 2 minutes while you add whatever you like to the tea - nothing for me, thanks.

Now tuck in. The sweet, spicy, very nicely textured porridge is very satisfying, and sets you up well for a morning of wandering about in the forest, gathering firewood, or sitting by the fire with a book. It is the ideal cold-weather breakfast. It is an essential Canadian experience, even if it was force-fed to squirming children who were vocally protesting the experience. It is good stuff.

The Past#

Red River Cereal was something I ate, grudingly as a child. The cardamom is my own innovation, probably from growing up in a city that had a lot of Finnish folks and a lot of Finnish breakfasts. The company went under at some point, and it disappeared. When I got the nostalgic urge for it, and couldn’t find it anywhere, I went digging in and found that it had disappeared. I resigned myself to never having it again.

A few years ago, Arva Mills in Ontario bought the recipe and IP for Red River and started producing it again. I ordered myself a few bags, and it’s back in my regular rotation for breakfasts. You can find it at the Arva website.

Bowl of Red River Cereal and a cup of tea